


Still In My Head

by riversandroads01



Category: Love Island (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Post-Villa (Love Island: The Game)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:20:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 59,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26308465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riversandroads01/pseuds/riversandroads01
Summary: April won Love Island 2019 with her partner Lucas. After the show, they moved in together and got engaged at the Love Island reunion party. They seem to be very happy. But April starts thinking about the past more and more and a certain librarian  is still up there in her mind. What happens when he shows up to her engagement party?
Relationships: Noah/Main Character (Love Island)
Comments: 27
Kudos: 55





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alrighty so I've edited this about a million times and I've decided to finally post it. It's not the best first chapter but i have to start somewhere, y'know? So here it is.

April wakes up with Noah's strong arms around her. As soon as she opens her eyes, she can hear the relentless snoring. As loud as a jackhammer against a paper-thin wall. She wiggles out of Noah's arms without waking him up. She sees several different beds filled with the villa's islanders. She realizes that she's in the villa. She scans the room to see who's awake. No one except her, the early bird.  
  
Next to April, Noah starts stirring and getting up.  
  
"Hey, I thought you were sleeping." April gazes down upon him.  
  
"I know but someone got up already. Someone who should be in bed" Noah wraps his arms around her and tries to pull her back to bed.  
  
April laughs and sits up again. Noah groans and sits up with her.  
  
"Come on, I'm an early bird."  
  
He starts kissing her on her neck on the way up to her jaw. April brings his face in to kiss him. As soon as she does, everything disappeared. Noah, the villa, everything as far as she could see. All of that was just a dream. About the villa, again. About Noah, again.  
  
She feels Lucas's hand in hers as she gains consciousness They got engaged last week. It's been a year since they had left the villa with 50k in their pockets. How could she be dreaming about Noah when Lucas proposed to her just 10 days ago?  
  
She feels Lucas slip his hand out of hers and start to get up.  
  
"Hey, what's wrong?" He asked as he gets up and kisses her on the head. She realizes she was breathing heavily.  
  
"Just a bad dream, that's all." She lies to him. "What time is it?" She asks.  
  
"It's 6:30." He sighs "I gotta go to work." He still had his physiotherapy job in Oxford and he had even got promoted 6 months after the show he had aired. This meant longer hours and less time at their recently-bought home. He had compromised with buying this house in London instead of staying in Oxford so April tried not to complain about it. At least not to his face.  
  
"Alright" April sighs. They got engaged last week and should be closer than ever but she felt him drifting away from her more and more each week.  
  
He lifts himself off the bed and starts to go get ready leaving April with her thoughts. She sighs again and flops down on the bed. Would things be better if she had made different decisions in the villa? If she hadn't of given up on Noah? She shakes her head at the thought. She can't think things like that.  
  
Lucas comes out of his closet, buttoning up his shirt. April climbs out of the duvet and sits up to face him.  
  
"Look, i know it's hard not having me here a lot of the time." He finishes buttoning his shirt and runs a hand through his hair.  
  
"But we'll get through it and we'll have our perfect wedding in the spring, okay?" April smiles at him. This is what she liked in the beginning how he always had the determination to make her smile.  
  
"Okay" She says.  
  
"Remember I'll be here all day tomorrow?" He says as he looks down at her smiling. She smiles back at him and brings him down for a kiss.  
  
He looks down at his watch and notices the time. "Shit. 6:57. I gotta go. I love you and I'll see you tonight." He kisses her on her cheek and practically runs out the door.  
  
After he leaves, she gets up to get some coffee. Her band doesn't need her at the studio until 2. She's the lead singer of her band and ever since Love Island, they've been selling their albums like crazy.  
  
It's been a pretty crazy year for all of the Love Island cast, especially April. Her and Lucas bought a nice house in London with Priya and Chelsea helping them out with the real-estate and the decorating. Chelsea and April went for a glamorous camping trip as a mini-reunion. As the lead singing of her band, Thin Ice, she announced that they are going to on tour in 3 months. They had a whole reunion last week with all the islanders of 2019 last week, where April saw everyone of her past in the villa.  
  
Lately, April has been thinking back to those days at the Love Island Villa. She wonders if she had done things differently, would she be happier? Things are fine with Lucas, but could it be better? She tries to erase all those thoughts from her head whenever they come up. Just as she fights off her thoughts, her phone starts ringing with Hope's caller ID on the screen.  
  
"Hello? Hope?" April says confused. Her and Hope haven't spoken since the show ended. They never were on the best terms, because of their feud about Noah.  
  
"Hey, April. How have you been doing? I'm sorry i didn't get to catch up with you at the reunion, I've been so busy at work. They called me in like 5 minutes after i got to the party!" She pauses and scoffs. "Anyway, how have you been doing, girl? A little birdie told me that someone got engaged!" She says in an awfully cheerful tone. April had never heard her so happy and upbeat while talking to her.  
  
"And I'm guessing that birdie was Chelsea." Hope chuckles a little. Chelsea and April are best friends and April choose her to be her best person last week.  
  
"Anyway...yeah Lucas proposed and it was great. We have our engagement party in...oh, it's actually tomorrow. I didn't realize-" She's looking at the calendar in her kitchen as gets cut short by Hope.  
  
"Oh hun, that's actually what i wanted to talk about." Hope says with that cheerful tone still in her voice.  
  
"Noah and I are coming tomorrow! We really want to catch up with all of you guys, and since we didn't get the chance at the reunion, we figured this could be a good time!" Classic Hope move. Making this party all about her, April thought.  
  
"Oh, that's great! I'm excited to see you both there." She somewhat lies. She is a little excited to see Noah there, they have barely talked after she broke it off with him on the show. She wondered how he was doing and what he has been up to since the the show.  
  
"I'm excited too!" As Hope is talking, April hears some movement on Hope's side of the phone. She hears Hope say 'Hi Noah' quietly.  
  
"I gotta go, April, but I'll definitely see you at the party."  
  
"Okay. Bye Hope. See you soon." April says.  
  
"Bye-bye." Hope says. April sighs as soon as she hangs up the phone. Noah and Hope are coming to her engagement party.  
  
She hasn't talked to Noah in a long time. He was at the reunion party but he and Hope didn't stay for very long. Even if he did stay, He and April probably wouldn't have talked very long anyway. She wishes that she could still talk to him. It's been awkward between them for a really long time. They had a relationship in the villa and when that blew up, they just stopped hanging out. She's thinking of calling him as she hears a familiar knock at the door.  
  
She sees it's Chelsea through the peephole with a million bags and balloons. She opens the door and lets Chelsea inside.  
  
"Oh my god, Hi!" She wraps April in a big hug and sets her stuff on the ground.  
  
"There was a guy out there who let me in right as i was about to call you. He was cute!" Chelsea raises her eyebrows.  
  
"I thought that you were with Henrik..?" April says questioningly.  
  
"I am! I'm proper loyal!"  
  
She and Henrik had gotten together a few months after the show had ended. When they first got together, April just couldn't see them working. But now, seeing them together, they just fit together. It's like two pieces of a puzzle piece come together. April wondered if her and Lucas had that.  
  
"'Anyway, so i brought stuff over for the party! I'm so excited, babes! You're getting married!" She says practically jumping up and down. She has about as much energy and enthusiasm as a brand-new puppy.  
  
April smiles at her excitement. She's obviously way more excited for this wedding than April is.  
  
"You brought stuff for the engagement party?" April asks, as she looks into the bags and finds tablecloths, champagne and snacks.  
  
"Yeah, of course, I'm your best person!" She cries.  
  
"Thank you, Chels. You're the best person I could ever have!" She looks down at her bubbly best friend with admiration.  
  
"So how are you doing? How's Lucas? Where is he? How are the wedding plans going?" Chelsea says, bouncing off the walls with questions.  
  
"Alright chill a little okay, babe. Take a seat" Chelsea sits down at their dinner table holding her coffee cup in her hands.  
  
"I'm fine, Lucas is fine. He's at work, like he is all the time." She says under her breath. "Wedding plans haven't really started yet. I'm really busy. I have tour in a few months and we literally just got engaged."  
  
Chelsea raises an eyebrow confused.  
  
"You're really busy?" April nods quickly.  
  
"Hun, you're wearing pajama and it's 10:47." April looks down at her clothes and realizes she's right.  
  
"I'm just gonna change, okay?" She goes in her bedroom and quickly picks out an outfit for the day. Chelsea about pounces on her as soon as she gets out of her bedroom.  
  
"Babes, I think you should look in this bag." She pulls out a teal bag with flowers on it. April takes the bag and looks into it.  
  
"Think of it as a little engagement present." Inside of the bag, April finds a nice photo frame. The picture inside is of the two of them at the finale after party.  
  
"It's a frame for you and Lucas. You could put your wedding photo in here, I just put that photo of us in as a placeholder." April looks down at the picture smiling.  
  
"Chelsea, I love it." She puts the the photo frame onto the kitchen table. "You didn't have to all do this, babe." She looks down at the bags of stuff and her present.  
  
"I know. It's just that I'm your bra and I want to do everything I can do for you cause I love you and I want you to be happy." She says as she smiles widely.  
  
"That's so sweet of you, hun. But I'm happy and I'm doing great." She says as she looks down at the ground. "I'm really doing great." Every time she says it, it sounds wrong. It sounds like she's lying.  
  
Chelsea has a concerned and confused look on her face but she doesn't say anything. She doesn't want to push her. "So who's all coming to this party?" Chelsea asks, changing the subject.  
"My parents, Lucas' parents, Some of Lucas' work-friends. Pretty much all of the Love Island people." For a quickly arranged engagement party, they sure had gotten a lot of people to RSVP. Even Hope and Noah were coming.  
  
"Oh yeah, I have something to tell you." April says, remembering her conversation with Hope earlier.  
  
"Hope and Noah are coming to the party! Hope just called me earlier and told me about it."  
  
"Won't that be a little awkward? You know, since you and Hope kind of fought over Noah in the villa?" She says, suddenly a bit serious.  
  
"I mean, we did. But that stuff is all over now and we're over it." April looks at Chelsea and she doesn't look convinced.  
  
"Plus, I miss talking to Noah and it'll be good to see him."  
  
Chelsea just sits there, fidgeting with her hair.  
  
"I'm not, like, dying to talk to him or anything but it will be nice to see him and talk to him." She says, trying to downplay her excitement to see him.  
"Well, I know it'll be a fun party. I'll make sure of it." She says with a wide Chelsea smile on her face.  
  
"Alright, babes. I just wanted to drop this stuff off. I gotta go, I have a client that I have to get to." Chelsea gets up off her chair and grabs her purse.  
  
"They're this couple and they have a pug! They showed me pictures and oh my god, April! Now i really really want one!" April chuckles and grins down at her.  
  
"Thank you for being there for me, Chels." April says as she is pulled in for a hug.  
  
"Always, my bra." She says back. They say their goodbyes and Chelsea leaves. April breathes out a sigh of relief as she closes the door. She loves Chelsea and she's always there for her, but sometimes it's a relief when you hear silence and not her millions of stories.  
  
But the silence leaves April all alone with all her thoughts. All the questions wrack her brain when she's alone and inside her own head.  
  
Is she really happy? Is she lying to herself by saying she's happy with this life? Her life is filled with friends, family and work that is fulling. Isn't that supposed to be enough for her? It should be but she always ends up looking back to the past to what she could've done better. Would she be happier if she had continued on with Noah? She scoffs at the thought. She can't be thinking things like this, she already went through earlier this morning.  
  
She goes on her phone for a distraction from her thoughts. She sees a post on Instagram about Love Island. It's a finale photo they had taken. It has her and Lucas and Noah and Hope. She smiles at that picture. That was a beautiful day.  
  
The more she looks at that photo though, the more she thinks about things. She thinks about Noah again. Why does she think about him so much? She thought that she was totally over him after Casa. But she has to be over him. She's getting married to Lucas and he's gonna give her the life she always wanted. Why can't she just be happy with what she has?  
  
She sighs. She got all mucked up in her thoughts again. She looks down at the photo again. She looks at Noah and smiles. She was thinking about calling him before Chelsea came over. She goes into her contacts and sees that she still has his number in her phone. She impulsively presses the call button and brings the phone up to her ear. She hears the phone ringing and her heart rate speeds up a bit. She breathes out and then hears something on the other line.  
  
"Hello?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There it was. I know isn't an amazing first chapter but I have a lot of cool ideas so stay tuned. I hope you guys liked it and there will definitely be more to come!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! So this chapter is coming out pretty soon after chapter one was put out because i already had most of this chapter done. But i rewrote and added more to this chapter and i'm actually kind of proud of it. It's sort of Noah's whole day and it has Noah and April's conversation in it. It also inculdes a 'that's what she said' which from The Office (U.S., NBC). I know most of you probably know that is from The Office but i just needed to clarify just in case of like copywright and whatever.

Noah stands at the door nervously. The last time he saw Hope, they had a fight and it ended with the slamming of car doors. But that's in the past. They can make up. He breathes out slowly and gets his keys out of his pocket. As he puts the key into the lock, he hears Hope talking to someone through the door. He opens the door and finds Hope sitting in the living room.  
  
"I'm excited too!" He hears Hope say as he gets into her apartment. Noah sets his keys on the counter and moves to sit on a chair in the living room. Hope quietly says hi to him then goes back to talk to the person on the phone. Noah quickly learns that it's April who she's talking to when Hope says bye to her. Hope exits the call and smiles at him.  
  
"Hey, just talking to April. She and Lucas got engaged!"  
  
"Wow, that's awesome." He says plainly. He scratches his head in confusion.  
  
"Uh, why were you talking to April?"  
  
"Oh yeah, I wanted to tell her we're coming to her engagement party. It's tomorrow."  
  
"That's nice." Noah shifts in his seat a bit. He sits quietly for a while until Hope notices.  
  
"What's wrong?"  
  
"You just didn't really ask me about this party. I mean, it's totally fine but it'd be nice to know beforehand." He doesn't want to start a fight so he says it's fine.  
  
Hope raises her hands a little confused. "What, do you not want to go to the party?"  
  
"No, no, i do." He says, trying to defuse a ticking bomb. Hope stands up and looks Noah straight in the eye.  
  
"I just figured that it'd be nice to catch up with all of our friends. And since we didn't get to last week and you were mad about that, I figured you'd want to go." Noah feels the time on the bomb going down quickly.  
  
"I totally want to go. It's going to be great" He says cheerfully. She smiles down at him and the bomb is defused. At least for now, he's safe.  
  
Hope sighs and sits down on the couch again. Noah looks out the window as they sit in silence for a minute.  
  
"Noah, I think we should talk about our relationship." She says seriously. Noah rubs his eyes in frustration. They've had many many talks about their relationship over the past year. Long never-ending talks.  
  
"I know that it's been kind of awkward lately. I know it hasn't been smooth sailing for us since we left the villa."  
  
It's true, they have had many many fights in the past year. It got so bad to a point where Noah moved out of their previously-shared apartment into one he rents with one of his friends.  
  
The magazine title read The Runner-ups of Love Island Season 2: Has this Power Couple now turned toxic? Are Nope finally living up to their name?  
He has since stayed in that separate apartment and they've been trying to work it out all while not being in the same place. The press still says they're splitting up or are going to split up.  
  
"Yep. Sure have." Noah responds, to be putting it simply.  
  
"But i want to make it work." Hope says.  
  
"So you tell me your issues, i'll tell you mine." She points to herself and then to him.  
  
"Okay." Noah sits up and puts his hands together.  
  
"I wish I could spend more time with you. It just feels like you work all the time and I never see you."  
  
"I can't fix that i work a lot, Noah. I love my job and I'm not gonna stop working just to please you." Hope says.  
  
"I never said you had to stop working. But I wish that I could hang out with you more. Even on weekends, it's like I can't get a moment alone with you."  
  
"Well, I can't really do anything about that, Noah!" She says, angrily.  
  
"Okay, okay. Let's move on to another thing." He says.  
  
"Like what?" Hope asks, still angry.  
  
"Like...the fact that you decided that we were going to April's party without talking to me about it first. I mean, I would like to make decisions with you instead of you just deciding these things for us."  
  
"I thought you wanted to go!" She yells.  
  
"I do! It's just I want you to talk to me about these things!"  
  
"Excuse me for planning an event that we both want to go to! I thought it was nice of me to do that for us. Especially since it's your ex-girlfriends party we're going to!"  
  
Noah sighs. He knew bringing up the party again might lead to her getting angry again. But he wanted to just talk about it and maybe see how they could fix that in the future, not get angry at each other for the thousandth time.  
  
"Are you gonna talk to me or are you just gonna sit there?" Hope says, with the anger still in her voice.  
  
Noah looks down at his watch and then looks up at Hope.  
  
"It's 9:00, I gotta go into work. Could we put a pin in this?" He says as he gets out of the chair.  
  
"I guess if we have to." She says, irritated.  
  
"Okay" He stands there for a minute, unsure of what to do. He looks at Hope and she nods her head and points his head towards the door. He nods back and walks to the door. After he opens the door, He looks back at Hope and he sighs again. This wasn't how he wanted to leave things with them.  
  
"Bye, Hope." He says. He closes her door and walks away, feeling awful. Another fight he has to scribble onto the tally.  
  
He gets into his car and drives to his library. Since he had moved to London for Hope, he had to quit his old job and start working in one of London's big libraries. He didn't like it as much as he did at his old small library in Romford. When he had first moved, he had tried to make living in London and traveling to Romford work but it just was too much for him to deal with.  
  
Noah gets to his job and starts working. He sees his co-worker, Mary, in the corner reading to a few little kids who come in with their parents every few days. He smiles although his heart swells with how much he wants to have kids. He and Hope talked about it already, she doesn't want kids and he does. They both just keep thinking the others feelings will just change. He looks at his spot at the library. He supposes, if his relationship with Hope keeps going, that this is the closest he will ever get to interacting with kids.  
  
A group comes into the library, looking for a picture with Noah, distracting him from his thoughts. When the fans had found his new London library location, they had started to come in everyday. Now that the hype has died down, it's not so bad. There are still a few people that come in just to see him though. Noah still looks forward to his breaks everyday. He goes into to the break room and sighs with relief. He sits down and goes on his phone. He sees a photo of him and Hope a year ago at the Love Island finale. He starts to think back to the villa. He and Hope still fought then, and they are still having trouble to this day. He has to compromise a lot. But relationships are about compromise, right?  
  
His phone starts ringing cutting him out of his thoughts, at least for now. The caller ID says April. He hasn't talked to her in a long time.  
  
"Hello?" He picks up the phone and says.  
  
"Hey, Noah. It's April." She says, her voice sounds apprehensive.  
  
"Yeah, I know. Hi, how are you?" He asks.  
  
"I'm okay, what about you?" She asks him back.  
  
"I'm alright. I'm at work so...not amazing." He leans back in his chair, getting more comfortable.  
  
"There's a bunch of people that came into the library today just to see me. God, it was so awkward. I hate it." She chuckles. He smiles, remembering her laugh.  
  
"I know, it's awful. Especially when you're the winner of Love Island and you know, you look this hot, just everyone in the world wants to take a picture with me." She says, making him laugh a little.  
  
"Of course." He says, smiling.  
  
"So, why'd you call?" Noah asks her after they're done laughing.  
  
"Oh, I heard you were coming to my party. Plus i haven't talked to you in a really long time so i wanted to talk to you." She says.  
  
"Yeah? Well, it's good to hear from you. How's Lucas?" He asks. He heard her sigh quietly on the other side of the phone.  
  
"He's fine, he's working." She pauses.  
  
"I mean, everyone works but he just... works a lot." She says. She tries to hide her sadness but it slips through the cracks.  
  
"Yeah, i'm sorry that must be hard." He says sympathetically.  
  
"No, no, it's okay. I still see him and we're doing great." She says, trying to make herself sound happy and cheerful.  
  
"I know it's hard, April. Hope kind of does the same. She works a lot and that's fine, but we just haven't been doing very well." He says. He tries to find a positive spin on his and Hope's situation but he can't find one.  
  
"I'm sorry." She says.  
  
"It's okay, we'll be fine. I'm sure you and Lucas will be okay too. I promise." He says, reassuringly.  
  
"Thanks, Noah." She says, smiling.  
  
"So how are things otherwise? How's your musician life treating you?" Noah asks her.  
  
"It's treating me pretty well. I'm going on tour in a few months so there's that."  
  
"A tour? Wow, that's awesome. Where to?" He says excitedly.  
  
"Yeah, it is. It's just around the U.K."  
  
"Oh yeah? Maybe I could be your groupie. You know, follow your tour stops and buy all your merchandise." He says, trying to make her laugh again. She chuckles at him and he grins hearing her laugh again.  
  
"Yeah, you could." She says, still smiling.  
  
"How's the library been?" She asks him.  
  
"I moved libraries, actually. It's one that's in London. It's a lot of bigger, it's kind of weird if I'm honest."  
  
"Oh yeah? A shy Romford boy like you in big ole' London. It's bound to be a little weird."  
  
"Yeah, I guess it is. It's like being in the villa for the first time again. It's just so big and so hard to grasp."  
  
"That's what she said." April says, giggling.  
  
"You're such a dork. You watch american television?"  
  
"I can't help it, it's my guilty pleasure!" They laugh together for a bit.  
  
"Anyway, back to your work. I wanna hear more about it."  
  
"Really?" He asks a little confused. No one ever wants to talk about his boring library job.  
  
"Yeah, of course I do. Why wouldn't I?" He smiles at this.  
  
"People just always want to talk about the other more exciting parts of my life. Like Love Island and the villa and how it felt to be there."  
  
"You do remember I was at this villa with you?"  
  
"Yes, yes, I do. But it's like everyone wants to talk about the villa and it's just really nice to have someone interested in talking about my life now instead of then."  
  
"Oh yes, I'm so amazing for just asking about how your job is." She says sarcastically.  
  
"You are." He says genuinely.  
  
There's a pause in the conversation until April says: "I still sometimes think about back in the villa. Like about what would've happened if i'd done things..differently. Would i be happier? I don't know. I guess I never really will."  
  
Noah sighs. "Yeah, I've been thinking about that too." He says as he pushes back his hair.  
  
Noah breathes out slowly. They sit in silence, thinking about the past and what they could've done different. They are both too scared to say what they're both thinking: What would've happened if they had ended up together?  
  
"Well, we should-" One of Noah's co-workers comes into the break room, interrupting Noah.  
  
"Shouldn't you get out there? It's my break." Noah raises his eyebrows and starts getting up out of his chair.  
  
"April, i have to go. It was great to talk to you, i wish we could talk more, but i have to get back to work."  
  
"Okay. Um, well, it was nice talking to you too. I'll see you at the party tomorrow."  
  
Noah smiles at the thought of seeing her.  
  
"Yeah, I'll see you tomorrow." He says.  
  
He hangs up the phone and walks out of the break room. As soon as he gets into the check out area there are about a dozen people in line.  
  
One girl in line brought a magazine with Him, Hope, Lucas and April all on the cover. He smiles, thinking of April and their talk. He missed talking to her and making her smile.  
  
"You're smiling. You like my magazine?" The girl in line says to him. He smiles shyly and nods. "You thinkin' about Hope?" She asks him. He says yes to her but that's a lie. He wasn't thinking about Hope at all. He was thinking about April.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that was Chapter 2! I hope you like it and there'll be more to come! I don't know what day i'll be uploading it every week (that seems to be a common thing uploading every week on a specific day) but there'll definitely be more! Thank you for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, we flashback to the Stick or Switch re-coupling where Noah picks Blake and April gets hurt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta reader - margotmuses  
> I want to say thank you to my beta reader for helping me so much with this chapter, they edited this chapter and made the grammar and phrasing 1000% better.  
> This chapter is quite dramatic but i thought it was necessary to see how April and Noah broke up in the villa. I hope you guys like this chapter, i worked really hard on it and i'm actually proud of it!

April sits at the firepit, waiting anxiously for her partner, Noah, to come out. They had just returned to the villa and were finally sitting around the firepit again. April had stayed loyal as she could during Casa Amor and she was holding out hope that Noah did too. If not for her, for Hope at least. After all they've been through, April thought they deserved a chance to be a normal couple. Well, not normal couple. A normal Love Island couple, at least. But he could just go straight back to Hope if he had been loyal. The thoughts run through her head every second. She isn't even really focused on the other people coming in. Marisol, to the left of April, grabbed her hand and held it in support.  
  
"Hey, you okay?" She asked April. April takes a deep breath in.  
  
"I'm fine, it's just so scary. He could come in with someone else any minute now." She says anxiously.  
  
She looks to the ground and focuses on one spot to try to calm down.  
  
"If he does, then he's an idiot." Marisol says as she squeezes her hand.  
  
"Thanks, Marisol." April looks up at Marisol and smiles a tiny bit.  
  
April looks around the firepit. She sees a new girl standing with Ibrahim. Chelsea and Elijah sit next to each other nearby. Chelsea waves at her cheerfully, making April smile. She hears the gate open and looks over. Bobby swaggers into the villa, reciting some bit about him being 'single and ready to mingle'. April smiles at him. He smiles back, although still apprehensively. He and April were coupled up just before Noah picked her. Although they ended things amicably, things were still pretty awkward with them. He sits down and they wait for the next arrival. It's only a matter of time. April can hear her heart beat faster as she waits for Noah to walk into the villa.  
  
The moment finally comes.  
  
Noah walks into the villa, a stunning, unknown girl right beside him.  
  
April stifles a sharp intake of breath.  
  
"Who is that?" Priya asks, features twisting with shock.  
  
"Hey guys, it's so cool to see all again!" Noah enthuses as he looks around the firepit. His eyes reach April's, and the spot beside her. There's no one there. Shocked, he looks back at April with guilt written all over his face. She meets his gaze but looks down almost immediately.  
  
The girl next to him introduces herself as Blake. After she has done so, everyone's eyes are on April. Her mind is turning totally blank and she can't think of a single thing to say. Although she's always been a bit shy, she's spoken her mind on Love Island and is known for being one to stand up when a friend is involved. But when faced with all eyes on her tonight, she just sits there, not knowing how to react.  
  
All she feels is hurt that he has chosen to switch instead of stay with her. But she can't do anything about that. She can't change that fact. What do they expect her to say?  
  
She looks up at Noah and he mouths an _'I'm sorry'_. She looks down and sighs. The producers behind the camera are encouraging her to say something. But she can't think of anything to say. She just wants to run away.  
  
"I know you all expect me to say something...but i have no idea what to say, to be honest." She says as she stands up. "So I'm just gonna go. If anyone needs me, then you can come find me." She says. As she walks away from the firepit, she can hear Hope saying how hurt she is in seeing Noah return with Blake.  
  
April heads up to the rooftop to collect her thoughts. She isn't all that shocked - after all, it was a possibility. She was more hurt than anything. She thought he liked her. She knew that she wasn't as close to him as Hope, but she thought that maybe if they were given the chance, she could be. How did she even get here? She fought to be with Noah since the beginning. And now, was any of it even worth it? She looks up at the sky, distracting herself. She sighs as she consumes the stars.  
  
Then, she looks back down at the firepit. Everyone has spread out themselves throughout the villa.  
  
Suddenly she hears footsteps coming up behind her.  
  
"I thought I'd find you up here." a voice says.  
  
She turns around and finds Noah standing there looking at her.  
  
"What do you want, Noah?" She says, anger and hurt clouding her voice.  
  
"April, I just want to talk. I want you to see where I'm coming from. I want you to stop looking at me like... like that." He says.  
  
"How the hell do you want me to look at you? You hurt me. I can't just make that go away in two seconds!" She says, the anger spilling out of her. They both stand in silence, looking away from each other.  
  
He sighs and comes over to stand next to her. "I'm sorry I hurt you." He says quietly, his voice the gentle tune she'd become so accustomed to. She looks up at him, her big brown eyes softening a little. Her eyes move back down to the villa grounds.  
  
"Can I just explain my side? Please, April." He looks down at her but she keeps her eyes straight. Finally, she looks up at him and his pleading eyes.  
  
As she sits down on the bench, she says "Fine."  
  
He sits down right next to her. "While you girls were at Casa Amor, did you get a video message of us guys?" He asks her.  
  
"Yeah, we did. Why do you ask that?"  
  
"We got one too...and you were in it." He opens his mouth to say more but she stops him.  
  
"I didn't do anything wrong." She says, as she crosses her arms, annoyed.  
  
"I'm not saying you did. I'm just telling you about my thought process at the time." He raises his arms like he's declaring his innocence. April smiles at that, but quickly catches herself and regains her composure.  
  
"I thought you would recouple with one of those lads. You looked like you were having so much fun. You were nibbling on one of the lads' ear and...he looked like was loving it. After, I saw that, I was sure that you were going to recouple. I just thought..." He pauses, thinking. "Maybe I was into it more than you were. I misjudged the situation and I'm sorry for that."  
  
April looks at him and he looks genuinely sorry.  
  
"Can you understand where I'm coming from?"  
  
"Yeah, I can." She is just about ready to forgive him but she hears a voice coming from across the villa. It's Hope's. She can't work out the exact words but hearing Hope's voice was enough to remind her of the thing that had been bothering her.  
  
She stands up and looks at the sky again. The moon is a crescent and is reflecting down upon them.  
  
"April?" Noah asks confused. He gets up off the bench and stands to face her.  
  
"What about Hope?" She turns to him. Her voice is steady and calm but her mind is full of worry.  
  
He chuckles sourly and looks at the ground.  
  
"What about her?"  
  
"Noah, come on. What is going to happen with Hope? What is gonna happen with Blake? What is going to happen... with me?" She says, her voice cracking a little. "You have three girls you're stringing along here!" Her voice quickly growing with anger. "What's going to happen?"  
  
Noah scrunches his face in confusion.  
  
"I'm confused. Since when did you want to talk about Hope and Blake? I thought we were just clearing the air about the stick or switch stuff."  
  
"We were. But we've never cleared the air about Hope and we need to. Are you gonna go back to her at the next recoupling?"  
  
Noah moves his hand to his face, rubbing his eyes. "I don't know! I'm just going to see how things go!"  
  
April sighs and looks to the ground. She breathes in and then chuckles a little sadly.  
  
"You never could make a decision, could you?"  
  
"I'm sorry, what did I do wrong here?" Noah says, becoming increasingly frustrated.  
  
"I can't do this anymore, Noah. I need to be with someone actually likes me enough to pick me." April says, giving up. She looks up at Noah, with hopelessness and vulnerability pooling in her eyes.  
  
"But I did pick you. Before Casa Amor, I wanted to give us a shot and try and get to know you."  
  
"We had one day. And then you moved on to Blake. Besides, that was only because Jakub had picked Hope, your first option." She looks down at the villa grounds thoughtfully. After a while, she turns back to Noah.  
  
"I didn't want to be a second choice. But now I'm not even a second choice, I'm a third choice. I know i might seem hysterical or crazy, but I'm not. I'm honestly not." She stands calm and centered. "I want more than this, Noah. I want to be with someone who actually wants me."  
  
"I do want you! I just have a lot to consider here."  
  
"I know you have a lot to consider but I'm going make it a little easier for you, mate." She pats Noah on the shoulder. "I'm done. Take me out the running for whoever the hell you end up with. I'm tired and I'm done." She moves towards the stairs, Noah following hot on her heels.  
  
"April, no, wait. I like you a lot, i'll figure out some way to pick you." Noah says, desperate not to lose her.  
  
"No, you're not going to pick me. You'll never pick me." She says with emotion in her voice.  
  
"You picked Blake over me and I'm sure you'll pick Hope over me when you get the chance. So I'm done. Whatever we had is over." She forces herself to look into his eyes. "Goodbye, Noah."  
  
With that, she walks down the stairs and out of his life. She wipes a small tear from her eye as she gets down to the last step.  
  
While she's not looking ahead of her, Lucas bumps into her.  
  
"Oh, I'm sorry, April. I was just going to the roof to get some headspace." Lucas says. He sees her sad expression and looks up at the roof. Noah's still standing up there.  
  
"Are you okay?" He asks her concerned.  
  
"Oh yeah, I'm totally fine..." She trails off as she stares at the ground, sniffing slightly.  
  
"I'm so stupid. I mean, why would he ever choose me?"  
  
Lucas pulls her into a hug.  
  
"Hey, hey, you're not stupid. He's just an idiot." He lets go of her and looks her in the eye. "And you're the most beautiful girl I've ever seen. Why would anyone not want you?" She smiles at his compliment and chuckles a little.  
  
"Well, he doesn't."  
  
"We've already established that he's an idiot. He's the idiot of the year for doing this." Lucas says.  
  
"I actually broke it off with him myself. I just was so tired with him not choosing anything and letting me being a second choice." She breathes out. "And I just didn't want to be a second choice anymore."  
  
"Yeah, I get it." Lucas looks up at Noah who is still up on the roof terrace. April catches him looking up there.  
  
"Hey, don't go up there." She tells him.  
  
"Why not?" Lucas asks.  
  
"As much as I don't like him right now, he's had a long night and he doesn't deserve another fight."  
  
Lucas looks up at Noah.  
  
He sighs. "I guess I won't. But give me the go ahead, I'll punch the lad straight in the face."  
  
April smiles. "Thanks, Lucas."  
  
"Are you going to be okay?" He asks.  
  
"Yeah, I'll be fine." She says. "I'm going to go see Chelsea."  
"That sounds like a good idea."  
  
"Oh and... thank you again, for helping me." She says, grateful for Lucas cheering her up.  
  
"You don't have to thank me. I'm just looking out for you." She smiles at how sweet he is to her. How much he cares for her for him to do this. For a while, she just looks at him, thinking about how considerate he had been. He's putting her first.  
  
"Shouldn't you go find-" He interrupted suddenly by April's mouth on his, kissing him. As soon as he realizes this is real, he starts kissing her back, his hands roaming her waist. Lucas has been waiting for this moment since he had gotten into the villa and first saw her in real life. April had finally seen him the way he had seen her.  
  
It's the perfect moment. But it's soon clouded by Noah coming down the stairs and seeing them. He stops in his tracks when he sees him kissing her. When they finally stop, they turn to see Noah standing there watching them. April looks at Noah, hurt and shock written all over his face.  
  
"Noah, I-" April starts trying to explain herself but Noah's already gone.  
  
"Whatever." He mumbles as he walks past both of them.  
  
April looks back at Lucas. "I should probably go...see Chelsea."  
  
Lucas is grinning, still reeling from the kiss.  
  
"Yeah, you go see Chelsea." They both stand there awkwardly, not sure what to do.  
  
"Alright..well. I'm gonna go then." She points the other way.  
  
"Okay, go ahead."  
  
April moves to go to the daybeds, where Chelsea is. She needs to talk all this through, tonight has been a whirlwind of emotions.  
  
"Hey babes, how are you doing? I know it was tough earlier with the Noah switching thing." Chelsea says to her as soon as she reaches the daybeds.  
  
"I just kissed Lucas." April says bluntly. Chelsea drops her jaw, shocked.  
  
"Oh my god! What happened? Tell me everything!" Chelsea says excitedly.  
  
She explains the whole story to Chelsea. Chelsea sits there, listening intently to her and nodding.  
  
"I'm looking at Lucas and he's being the best guy ever. And I just... kissed him. It felt so right at the time."  
  
"Does it still feel right?" Chelsea asks.  
  
"I don't know. Noah saw us kissing. He came down the stairs and stumbled upon us." Chelsea raises her eyebrows.  
  
"He just had the most awful look on his face and I felt horrible." April plays with the hairbands on her wrist, thinking of that moment.  
  
"Do you regret the kiss?"  
  
"I don't know!" She pulls on her hair in frustration.  
  
"Well, what _do_ you know?!" Chelsea asks her.  
  
"I know that I still have feelings for Noah. I also know that Lucas is a great guy and I'm starting to like him now, too."  
  
"Noah isn't really an option anymore, is he?" She asks.  
  
"No, I just wish that he would've fought for me. I wish he had stayed loyal at the recoupling. I wish he would just... want me and choose me." She says, voice filled with frustration and distress.  
  
"I know, hun. Come here." Chelsea pats the space next to her on the bed. She sits down and looks at Chelsea.  
  
"So much has happened tonight, I can't handle it." April says before laying down onto the daybed.  
  
"I know, it's going to be okay though. Why don't you sleep on it? Ooh, that's a good saying for a throw pillow." Chelsea says.  
  
"Alright, I guess I'll sleep on it. I'll have to go change." She says as the she flattens the duvet.  
  
"Go change. I'm going to bed now. Goodnight, babes." She gives April a big hug then goes into the communal bedroom.  
  
April goes to the bathroom to change and then comes out back to the daybed. She sits on the bed for a moment, thinking. Today was an awfully long day.  
  
Just as she's about to lie down, she sees Noah heading to the kitchen. He catches her looking at him and she instantly looks away. April sighs and gets into the daybed. She starts thinking about everything that happened today again. Noah switching to Blake, their fight, the kiss with Lucas. The kiss had been so perfect until she saw Noah's face. Maybe she needed to get Noah out of her head. She can't just wish for him to choose her and expect it to magically happen. She doesn't have a fairy godmother. Boy, does she wish that could happen though. That he would just choose her. She wished that more than anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that was it! I hope you liked it and there'll be more to come (probably) next week! The coming chapters will probably be the engagement party chapters so get excited!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that this is kind of late, I started school last week and it's hard to find time to write. In this chapter, Noah and Hope go to the engagement party. There isn't a lot of stuff going on in this chapter, it's kind of like a transition chapter, but I still hope you like it and thanks for reading!  
> also thank you to my beta reader- margotmuses - helped me out with parts out this chapter and helped me get out of my writers block!

Noah walks down his street, noticing the nature around him. The leaves had begun to change color a few days ago, showcasing the fact that summer is coming to a close and soon it will be cold again. He walks pretty far, getting lost in his surroundings. He looks down at his phone and his alarm goes off on his phone, signaling it's time for him to get dressed for the party. April's engagement party. 

He rushes inside his apartment and he puts on his best suit. It's simple, nothing extravagant, but it's him. He smiles at his reflection in the mirror. He looks nice. 

He gets into his car and starts it. Off to Hope's he goes. He gets to her apartment and Hope buzzes him up. He gets up to her door and knocks. 

"Hey!" She says as she opens the door.

"Hi! You look nice." He says. She's wearing a short sea green dress.

"Thanks, you too." She says as she grabs her keys. 

Noah sees her keys and scrunches his face in confusion. 

"I thought we were going together...?" He asks. 

"We're showing up at the party together. But I need to have my car with me, just in case I get called in to work." She mumbles out the last part. 

"Oh, yeah, yeah. Of course you do." He says. Of course she's taking another car to the same party. Why would he expect anything else? 

"Ready to go?" He says, holding out the door for her. 

"Yep." She says. She closes the door and walks with him down to where their cars are parked. In their separate cars, they follow each other to the party venue. They get to the room where the party is being held and as soon as Noah sees April at the door greeting people, he lights up with a smile.

Noah tries to remember the last time he saw her. It had to be the Love Island finale, where she and Lucas had won. He had forgotten how pretty she was in real life. 

"Noah and Hope!" April says excitedly when she sees them.

"Hi! It's so good to see you both!" She says smiling. She looks at Hope mostly but she shares a few stolen glances with Noah. 

"It's so great to see you, hun! I love your dress." Hope says, with a fake smile plastered all over her face.

April's wearing a flowy pale blue dress with pink and white flowers on it. She spins around a little showing how it moves. Her brown hair is up in two buns and she's wearing a necklace with a music note in it. 

"You look..." Amazing, beautiful, gorgeous. A million words pop into to his head but he can feel Hope's eyes burning into the side of his head. "Awesome." He says, blurting out a random one. 

She smiles at his dorky compliment. "Wow, thank you. I'm real awesome, huh? That's a new one" He blushes and chuckles a little.

"Well, go ahead and take your seats in there. We have food but not a ton of it so just don't take too much." Noah and Hope look to see they have a bar, a dance floor and a dining area. "And that's all. Oh and Chelsea is my best person after all, so just beware of her squealing at you about how much she's excited about this wedding." Noah and Hope laugh a bit at that part. 

"I'm not kidding." April says, looking serious. 

Noah looks at her with a smirk and his best squinted eyes, not believing her. She cracks and chuckles at him. "Okay, I am partly kidding. Look out for her though."

She goes off to do something for the party and Noah and Hope go to sit down in their chairs. They were a little fashionably late so most everyone is seated now. They start eating the food, and chatting with everyone from around the table and room. Minutes pass like seconds and everyone is laughing and having fun. 

Noah feels a tap on the back on his shoulder and looks over to find a familiar Scottish baker sitting in a previously empty chair. 

"Hey, mate." Bobby says to him, grinning. 

"Bobby! Hey, man, how have you been doing?" 

"I'm doing great. I got a new-pop up bakery back at home and I'm a very popular with the ladies now." He says, playing with his bowtie. "Just kidding, I'm not a player. It has been really great though. I even got a buttercream prize like I said I wanted to." 

"Wow, that's brilliant." Noah responds.

"How have you been doing? How's the Mrs.?" Bobby points toward Hope. 

Hope looks at Bobby and scoffs a little. "Hi, Bobby. Still telling those lovely little jokes?" Hope was never found of Bobby and his charm. After all, he did help April try to break her and Noah up. 

"You're still exactly the same, aren't ya?" 

Bobby wasn't found of Hope either, and he never liked Nope as a couple. He set up Operation Nope because he didn't like them together and it all looked like too much of an act. Seeing them still together now, maybe Bobby was wrong, but he still disliked seeing Noah paired with her. Noah had been with other girls, and they all seemed more suitable than Hope. Bobby's eyes move up to where April is, laughing at the head table with Lucas's hand on hers. 

"How long you been in town? I didn't even know you were coming to this." Noah asks, bringing Bobby's attention back. 

"Oh, last minute trip, desperately needed a change of scenery." Noah nods, understanding this. "To be fair, Noah, I didn't know you were coming to this either." 

"We didn't get to see everyone at the reunion, so good time, great place just to do it here." Noah says as he shrugs. 

"Yeah, anyway, how have you been doing, man? What's going on?" He asks him. 

"Nothing much. I, uh, moved libraries."

"Yeah? That's cool-" Bobby starts but stops when he notices April and Lucas coming up to to their table.

"Hey, everyone! We just thought we'd make the rounds before we got too buzzed to do so." April says, standing with Lucas in between Noah and Hope. 

"Hey, Noah, been a while, hasn't it?" Lucas says, looking down at him. 

Noah looks up at the two of them. Noah stands up to shake Lucas's hand, evening out their playing field. Noah has barely seen or even talked to Lucas at all. The only specific time he remembers was after the stick or switch recoupling when he found Lucas kissing April on the bottom of the steps. He remembers the jealousy that he felt in that moment and he feels a twinge of that now, looking at him with his arm around her waist. Why does he feel that? He's with Hope, and she's engaged to Lucas. Those feelings are supposed to be long gone. 

"Yeah, it's been a while." Noah says simply. They stand there awkwardly for a moment, unsure of what there is to say. 

"Boop!" Bobby comes up from behind Noah and boops April on the nose, breaking the tension. She instantly smiles widely and gives Bobby a big hug. Noah smiles at this. When April and Noah had gotten together, it had left Bobby in a weird place with her, considering they were in a couple before. Now, Noah can see they've moved past that and are friends now. 

Her and Bobby catch up with each other and Noah and Lucas stand there with nothing to do. 

"Um, how's physiotherapy?" Noah asks, trying to break the silence between them.

"It's good, it's real good. The only thing is that I work a lot and it's in Oxford, so I'm not here a lot. But that's about the only con so..." He trails off awkwardly. 

"Oh, yeah, April told me about that." Noah says, remembering his conversation with April yesterday. 

"When did you talk to April?" Lucas says, confused. 

"The other day, she called me. She didn't tell you?" He says and then takes a drink of his champagne. 

Lucas looks over at April, who is beaming while talking to Bobby just 5 paces away from them. "No, she didn't-" Lucas starts but is interrupted the sound of a fork hitting a glass. They all look around to see Chelsea and Henrik, glasses in hand, ready to give their toast. April raises her eyebrows and grabs Lucas's arm, heading back to their table. 

"Hi, everyone! As you know, I am the best person of my best friend in the world, April soon to be Koh!" Chelsea taps her glass in celebration and everyone else does with her. 

"I just wanted to give a little toast. To April and Lucas. I love you both, but I especially love one of you so so much. April, you've had a long journey to get you here. I know it wasn't all smiles, but you've found a keeper. Here's to April and Lucas!"

Noah raises his glass with all of them and looks over at April. She and Lucas clink drinks and then lean into to kiss each other. Noah's smile disappears and he gulps down his champagne. 

"You okay?" Hope asks him.

"Oh, yeah, doing fine." He lies to her. 

Seeing April again has brought up all these emotions inside of him. He thought that those feelings for her had gone away after they had broken it off but maybe he just stuffed them into a box and left them in the attic of his brain. Now that's he's seen her and talked to her again, that box in his brain is exploding and he feels all what he felt on the first day in the villa. She was the first one to come out on that day. He remember the moment her eyes fell on his for the first time. Gary had just tried it on her and he was the next guy in line. He quickly introduced himself and stood there silently, just looking at her. She just smiled and mouthed 'hi' to him. She seemed to understand him the moment she met him.

"Noah?" Hope says, bringing him back into the reality of the moment. 

"I asked if you wanted another drink." He looks down at his champagne glass and realizes it's empty. "Oh yeah, I'll get it." He grabs Hope glass and moves over towards the bar. He hands over the glasses and turns to look back at the party room. Henrik is up there with Chelsea, giving his toast. "While I'm up here, i just want to toast my girlfriend Chelsea, for putting most of this party together. She is the best and I adore her." 

The crowd 'awws' and Henrik and Chelsea give each other a love sick smile. They sure do know how to make a crowd swoon. 

"And a toast to finding your 'the one', whoever they are. April and Lucas have found it theirs' already and we're so so happy for them. To finding 'the one'!"

Noah looks over at April again. She's smiling at Lucas but Noah can tell it's not genuine. He wonders why. 

"Sir, your drinks." The bartender says to Noah. He thanks the guy and goes back to his seat. 

As he sits, he starts thinking about Henrik's toast and 'the one'. He remembering being young and wanting all that. Partnership, love, marriage. The one for you. Someone who supports you and helps you become a better person. He looks at Hope right beside him and she smiles at him. 

"You think I'm your 'the one'?" She asks. 

Noah scratches his ear awkwardly and responds with a lousy "Maybe." 

He eyes move to back to the head table, where April is supposed to be. But she's not sitting there and Lucas is sat there all alone. 

Hope's phone buzzes and she sighs. "Noah, I need to talk to you." She says. 

"What's up?" He asks, concerned with her tone. 

"Can we go talk in the coat room?" She points to the room across from the bar. 

"Yeah, I guess." He says, unsure of what this is about.

"What's going on?" Noah asks as soon as they make it back there. 

"I got a promotion at work. I was offered it last week..." She says, an unusual tone in her voice. 

"Wow, that's great!" He says, but he notices the look on her face. "Why isn't that great?"

"It's head of design, and it requires me to travel quite a bit." She says. 

"Oh, well, maybe we can go long distance-" He is interrupted by Hope. 

"Noah, I already took the job." She says bluntly.

"You already took the job." He says quietly, running a hand through his hair.

"Why didn't you tell me earlier? We could've talked about it." He asks her. 

"I just didn't want to bother you." Hope says simply.

"Hope, I'm not against the promotion at all. It's just that you have to talk to me about these things...that's kind of how relationships are supposed to work."

"I didn't want you to talk me out of it." Hope says, with bitterness and anger in her voice. 

"What makes you say that I would've talked you out of it?" 

"We had a conversation yesterday about how you were bothered about my work." 

"I'm not bothered about your work. I'm bothered by the fact that I never see you and every time I do see you we get into a fight." He says, anger rising in his voice too.

"That's not just my problem, okay?" Hope shouts.

"I know, we have a lot to work on." He says while he rubs his eyes. 

"Yeah, we really do." She sighs. "Noah, I'm just gonna go. I'm really tired and I'm not having the grandest time here." 

"Go? We literally just got here an hour and a half ago. What am I supposed to tell April and Lucas?"

"Tell them I got tired of all this and I wanted to go!" She says madly, becoming frustrated at him. "I'm tired of you not paying attention to me. I tried tonight to just leave it alone and not make it about me, but it's really hard when you look at her like that." 

"Look at who like that?" He asks, totally confused. 

"Who do you think, dumbass? April." 

"April? I don't look at April in any type of way." 

"Oh please! I saw with my own damn eyes how you looked at her when we came in." 

"Even if I did, that doesn't mean anything, Hope." Noah says, trying to refute her argument. 

"Of course it does! You've never..." Hope's voice fades out as Noah eyes move around the room, looking to distract himself.

He sees April from across the room talking to Lucas. They look like they're fighting about something. Lucas raises his arms and walks off, leaving her there standing at a bar table, looking lonely and sad. 

"Noah!" Hope snaps him out of his trance. "Come on, you've been doing that all night." She says, obviously very irritated with him. 

"I'm just gonna go. But I need you to answer this question first..." She breathes in, preparing herself to ask it. 

"Do you still have feelings for her?" She says seriously. Noah sighs as he stares at the ground. He doesn't really know the answer. He thought that he knew the answer but now with seeing her and talking to her again, he's unsure about all of it. He knows Hope doesn't want to hear that. He decides that he'll just say no to make her happy. After all, those feelings are in the past, right? 

"No. I don't." He says as he shakes his head. 

Hope breathes out a sigh and puts her hand on her face. "Alright, well, I'm gonna go then." She says, appearing to be still mad. She asks the coat check for her coat.

"Why are you still mad at me? I just told you I don't have feelings for her." He asks, shrugging his shoulders in confusion and annoyance. 

"Just because you say you don't have feelings for her, doesn't mean I don't think you do." She says, sure of herself. Noah looks up at the ceiling, this whole fight is determined to exhaust him to no end. 

He looks back to where Hope is, standing near the door, coat in hand. "When will I see you next?" 

"I don't know, Noah. Let me know when you want to work on all the crap we have to deal with." She says, putting her coat on. She opens the door and turns to see him, letting a bit of the cold in. "Goodbye, Noah." 

Noah rubs his eyes and sighs. Another fight left unresolved, he thinks to himself. Maybe they just needed some time away from each other, both of them need to get some headspace. Maybe space is just what they need to get them back on track or... maybe not. Either way, Noah could use some time off from the constant fighting.

He looks over the bar, where everyone is buzzed with excitement. Or maybe just buzzed in general. He sees one person in the back standing at a bar table all alone, not excited at all, April. She's looking around the bar at the people having fun at her party. She looks over and catches Noah's eyeline. She gives him a meek smile and mouths 'hi' to him. Noah smiles back and finds himself starting to walk over there to go see her.

"Hey." He says as he makes his way over to the little table.

"Hi, how are you?" She asks him, smiling slightly. 

"Not good." He says as he taps on the table.

"Me neither." Her and Noah smile at their shared unhappiness. It's nice to know someone knows how you're feeling.

"Hey, you wanna get a drink?" He asks her, looking over to the bar. 

She hesitates for a moment, thinking. She takes a breath in and responds:

"God, yes."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the chapter! There'll be more maybe next week, if not that week then the next week. Hope you guys still like this story by then.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> beta reader - margotmuses  
> Sorry this chapter took me a while, I have school and it's hard to find time to write now. This chapter is the continuation of the engagement party and we get to see more interaction between April and Noah! It's good cause I honestly really like writing them together and it's easier to write scenes with them than scenes with the fighting between Hope and Noah and Lucas and April. Anyway, hope you like the chapter and thank you for reading!

April hears the clinking of a fork against a glass and looks around. She sees Chelsea and Henrik standing up at their table. Their toast, she remembers. Chelsea had begged April to give a toast, and she had dragged Henrik along with her to do it. 

April waves Bobby and Noah goodbye and she and Lucas make their way back to their table. They sit down next to Lucas' mother, Lucy, who is on currently her 3rd glass of champagne. 

"Oh look who's late to the party, huh?" Lucy says once April and Lucas have sat down. April just smiles politely and looks up at Chelsea, who is giving her toast. 

"...the best person of April, soon to be Koh!" Chelsea says excitedly. April turns and smiles at Lucas. Expect he isn't looking at her, he's sitting there solemnly watching Chelsea give her toast. 

"April, you've had a long journey to get you here. I know it wasn't all smiles, but you've found a keeper. Here's to April and Lucas!" She turns back to Lucas and he looks at her this time. She leans in to kiss him and he quickly kisses her back, but April notices something is off about him. 

"Is something wrong?" She whispers to him, confused. _What could he be mad at? ___

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"Yeah." He says quietly, trying to not cause a scene. 

"What's going on?" She asks him. He opens his mouth to tell her but he's cut off by Henrik starting his toast. Lucas returns his attention to the toasts and April is searching her mind for something she's done that he could be mad at. 

"Lucas, what's going on? Tell me what's up." She says quietly while Henrik is toasting Chelsea and all the work she had to do for this party. Lucas keeps his eyes forward, though, trying to focus on being present at this party. 

"Hey, remember communication? Talk to me please." She says, desperately trying to get the bottom of this. Lucas finally turns to face her.

He sighs and shakes his head a bit. "Noah talked to me." 

"About what?" 

"I mentioned that I was working a lot and he said that you had told him that in your conversation yesterday. A conversation that you didn't tell me about." He says, staring at the ground. 

April sighs, realizing what he's upset about. "Lucas, that's nothing. I talked to him for a minute, I don't need me to tell you every time I call Chelsea, do I?" 

"This is different." He says, looking at her. 

"How is this any different?" She asks, shrugging one of her shoulders. 

"April, he's your ex-boyfriend." He says seriously. 

April's thinking of what to say when they both hear a glass clinking, bringing them back to the toasts. April quickly smiles fakely to the audience of people who are watching them. Henrik toasts to finding the one and they toast with him.

April's eyes move back to Lucas, looking to get back to their conversation, but she hears a cough from someone at their table as she opens her mouth. 

It turns out to be Lucy coughing at them. "More people at the door, hostess." She says rudely. April looks to where the door is and sees some of her childhood friends there.

"I have to go greet them, but we'll finish this conversation when I get back...?" April says questioningly. 

"Sure." Lucas says, begrudgingly. April sighs and moves over the door to welcome them. She greets her old friends from school and points their seats out to them. 

April returns to Lucas and their table. Lucas stands up when he sees her. 

"Lets go talk over there" He tells her out of the side of his mouth, trying to be discreet. He motions towards a little table that's a short distance from the bar. He moves over there before April can say anything else. 

"Trouble in paradise, hun?" Lucy says to her while holding a martini. 

Lucy hadn't exactly been accepting of April and Lucas getting together. Lucas had explained to her that Love Island wasn't the way she had expected her son to find his wife. April understood that it wasn't a traditional way to fall in love and understood that she would never accept that part of their relationship, but after a while, April got really sick of her constant rudeness. She hated having to be polite to her when her passive-aggressive comments hurt her so much.

April breathes in and tries to remember that Lucy is going to be her mother in law. She's going to have to deal with her. 

"No, no, we're doing just fine. I'm just going to go over there, okay?" April says, stressed out by everything going on. She inhales a sharp breath in and moves over to where Lucas is. 

"So... let's talk." April says awkwardly when she gets to the table.

Lucas rubs his eyes. "Why didn't you tell me you called him?"

"There was nothing to tell, I had just called him to check in." 

"I bet there's more of a story than that." He says, suspicious of her. 

"Hope had called me to tell me they were coming to this, and I figured since I haven't spoken to Noah in a while, I'd call him. There, that's the whole story, I didn't do anything wrong!" She says, frustrated at his jealousy. 

"April, that is something. He's your ex! And you talked him about my work?" He says angrily. 

"You work a lot! I was talking with an old friend, and you came up!" 

"He's not just an old friend, April, he is your ex!" He repeats. 

"Why do you keep saying that! He's just a friend now. Don't you trust me?" She asks him. 

"Not with exes I don't. Especially with him." 

"Why especially with him? Why are you so jealous, when I didn't do anything?" She shouts, getting tired of all this. 

"The only reason we're together is that he couldn't get his shit together and I was there for you."

"The only reason we're together? The reason we're together is that we choose to be together. It didn't happen just because Noah broke me and you just happened to be there."

"That's how it started, didn't it?" Lucas says, raising his arms in anger. 

"Look, I'm really tired of all this. We're fighting at our own party. Can't we just forget about it for a few hours, please?" 

"Fine. Let's just forget all of our problems." He says angrily, walking away from her. 

April sighs. This was not how she expected this night to go. She looks around the room, seeing all the people drinking and laughing. At least someone is having fun. 

April catches Noah, from across the room, looking at her. She smiles a tad and mouths 'hi' to him. He smiles and she sees him start to move towards her. 

"Hey." He says as he gets to the table. 

"Hi, how are you?" She asks him, smiling lightly. 

"Not good." He says as he taps his fingers on the table.

"Me neither." He smiles at her, and she smiles back. She doesn't know why he's not good, but he knows how she feels and that's nice. 

"Hey, you wanna get a drink?" He asks her, looking over to the bar. 

She hesitates, thinking of how Lucas would respond to her having a drink with Noah. He would get really mad. _Ah, screw it _, she thinks. This night is about her too.__

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"God, yes." She responds. They move over to the bar and order drinks. 

"So what's the deal with you?" April asks him before taking a sip of her drink, wanting to know what's upsetting him. 

"What's the deal with me? What does that mean?" Noah says then laughs a little. 

"Why are you drinking at the bar, looking all sad, when you could be hanging out with your girlfriend?" 

"We had a fight and she left... so I'm here at the bar, trying to drown my sorrows in alcohol." He sighs. "What about you, what's your 'deal'?" He motions quotation marks on the word deal. She chuckles at that. 

"First, 'what's your deal' is a saying, not just something I make up."

"Oh really? Then how come I've never heard it before?" He says jokingly. She playfully nudges him on the shoulder and they laugh together. 

"So what _is _your deal?" He asks when they're done laughing. Her smile falls flat and she sighs.__

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"Lucas and I fought. He's mad at me. He stormed off and now I'm here." 

Noah smiles sympathetically at her. "That sucks, I'm sorry." 

"I'm sorry about your fight with Hope. Are you two going to be okay?" She asks. 

"I don't know." He shrugs and takes a swig of his drink. "She's really mad at me."

"About what?" April asks, curious.

Noah opens his mouth to say something but stops himself. He composes himself and starts again. "I don't see her a lot, I told her I was bothered by that, she's mad at me." April nods as he pauses, taking a breath in. "What about your fight with Lucas, what's going on there?" He asks her. April looks at him. She can't tell him the truth that it was about him, but what is she supposed to say? 

"He was mad that I didn't tell him something." She says, somewhat telling the truth. "It was nothing, we're gonna be just fine." Why does that still sound weird? "We're gonna be just fine." 

Noah just nods and stays silent. 

They sit in the comfortable silence, drinking their drinks and listening to the excitement of the party behind them.

"April, can I ask you a question?" He asks her, breaking their silence. 

"Yeah. You already used it up, though, with that question." 

He grins and chuckles a little at that. 

"Seriously, though." 

"Shoot." She says, sitting up, preparing herself for the question.

"Why are you here, sitting with me, instead of hanging out with your friends at your party?" He emphasizes the 'your' in that sentence. 

"Tonight was supposed to be about me and Lucas. And now he's mad at me so I can't hang out with him. Chelsea is with Henrik. I can barely stand to be around my soon to be mother in law. Honestly, Noah, there's nowhere I'd rather be than here." 

Noah smiles at that. "Me either." She smiles back at him. 

"Why do you ask, though?" 

"I don't know. You're just so lovely and..." He says, and her heart flutters at his words. "I just find it hard to believe that you want to spend the night here with me." 

"This isn't how I expected my night to go but I am where I am and I'm having fun." She says as she shrugs. "I'm a simple girl. Any way the wind blows, you know?" 

"Any way the wind blows." Noah repeats back, nodding. "That's a line in a song, isn't it?" 

April smiles and laughs a little. "‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. Very good one." 

"Oh, well, you _are _the musician." He smiles at her and takes a sip of his drink. She looks at him and smiles shyly.__

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Maybe Lucas had a reason to be jealous, she thinks. She _was _in a relationship with Noah just before she and Lucas had gotten together. And she keeps thinking about Noah, even over a year after they ended things. He hurt her so much, why does she keep thinking about him? Maybe April never got over those feelings for him, she just tried to ignore it and focused on her new relationship with Lucas. Lucas was her rebound.__

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"April? You okay?" Noah asks her, snapping her back into reality. 

"Yeah, fine. Just fine." She says quietly. She looks down at her drink, still almost full, and drinks down practically all of it.

"Hey, hey, pace yourself. Are you sure you're okay?" He asks her, a look of concern on his face. 

April rubs her hand on her face. She looks away from Noah and starts playing with her wristbands. "It's nothing, I'm gonna be fine. It's all gonna be just fine." She says anxiously. 

April starts thinking about those words. Just fine. Was fine a good thing to be? If you live your life to be just 'fine', are you really happy? Her and Lucas are gonna be just fine. Is 'fine' good enough for her?

Noah, who can see she's clearly upset, turns to her and says: "Whatever it is, it's gonna be okay, okay? You are a smart and strong woman, I'm sure you'll get through... whatever you're going through." 

She stops playing with her hairbands and starts to calm down. "Thank you." She breathes out, so quiet he almost doesn't hear her. 

"You're welcome." He says back to her. 

She breathes in and looks at him. He's looking at her with concern and care in his eyes. There's a certain familiarity to his gaze but it's different than it was before. There's care and kindness in his eyes like there always has, but there's a bit of hesitation as he looks down, away from her. 

They both sit in silence, sipping their drinks and looking away from each other.

"April, I'm sorry." Noah says earnestly, out of the blue. 

"For what?" April asks, her eyebrows furrowing in confusion. 

"For... how I treated you in the villa." April nods her head slowly and looks down at the ground. "I was really stupid back then, and I made some decisions I'm not proud of." He pauses and breathes in, trying to come up with a better way to say this. 

"What I'm saying is that I'm sorry I hurt you. I'm sorry that I took Blake back to the villa." April looks up at him, his eyes are filled with compassion and sincerity. "If I could take it back, I would." 

"Look, Noah, it's been a long time. It's over with. Besides, we're not together anymore so why does it matter?" She laughs a little, trying to distance herself from the little thought in her head that she might still have feelings for him. 

"Yeah, that's true." Noah says while staring at his drink. "I just- i care about you, okay?" He says. April's heart flutters again as she looks at him. "Not in a romantic way anymore, obviously but-" Noah trails off. He breathes in, still trying to find the right words. "I want to be your friend. Is that okay?" 

"Yeah, that's okay." She says, smiling. He smiles back at her and raises his glass. 

"To being friends" He says while he moves the glass over to hers. 

April laughs a little at the gesture and raises her glass. She clinks her drink with his and responds: 

"To being friends."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it. There'll be more maybe by Thursday next week but it might be later, I don't really have a consistent schedule for writing so who knows? But I hope you enjoyed it and there'll definitely be more!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> beta reader - margotmuses  
> Hello! I had planned to have this chapter out by yesterday or Thursday but that didn't end up happening cause I was busy with school. Anyway I really enjoyed writing this chapter and I hope you guys like it!

"To being friends" He says as he moves the glass over to hers. 

April laughs a little at the gesture and raises her glass. "To being friends." She responds as she clinks his drink with hers. He sees Chelsea coming up behind April. She holds a finger up to him, signaling he should be quiet. Noah grins and nods. 

"You're getting married!" She practically yells in April's ear. April turns around to see Chelsea there and smiles. Chelsea pulls into her a hug. 

"I loved your toast, babes." April says to her as they come apart from each other. Noah had forgotten what April and Chelsea were like together. He remembers how they called each other babes at least a million times a day in the villa. 

"Yeah, it was awesome, wasn't it? Henrik's was great too, his was better than mine." 

April shakes her head. "Noo, yours was the best."

Noah takes a sip of his drink as they continue to talk. 

"Oh well, I _am _biased, Henrik is the best in my mind." Chelsea says, practically with hearts around her eyes.__

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"Of course. You're so smitten, babes." April says to her. Chelsea shrugs and smiles widely. "I am partly biased also, though, I barely listened to Henrik's toast." She mumbles out.

"What? Why not? It was the best!" Chelsea says again. "Why didn't you listen to the toast?"

April breathes in and looks at Noah. It was because of her fight, he thinks. April's eyes return to Chelsea's. 

"I just got a bit distracted, babes. It was nothing." She tells her, probably because she didn't want her to worry. Chelsea looks between the two of them, suspicious of if this is true. 

"Come on, what happened?" 

April raises her hands like she's innocent. Chelsea turns to look at him. 

"Noah, you obviously know, will you tell me?"

Noah drinks down the last of his drink and turns to Chelsea. 

"Why would you think I would know something?" He says, saving April from telling another person about the fight. April smiles at him, grateful for this. 

Her eyes quickly return to Chelsea, though, trying her best not to look suspicious. "I told you." She says. Chelsea sighs and gives up with a 'fine'. 

"Well, I just came over to tell you we're starting the music! It's dancing time!" She says, moving her shoulders up and down to imaginary music. "I'm so excited! It's gonna be just like when we had a party in the villa!" Chelsea says, and then scampers away like a bunny. 

"I forgot how high energy she is. It's like she's on 10 cups on coffee everyday." Noah says after Chelsea has left. 

"Yeah, she really is. After a while, you just get kind of used to matching her energy, so I'm on like 8 cups of coffee when I'm with her." April says, smiling. 

April takes a sip of her drink. "Thank you for covering for me. That was very kind of you." She tips an imaginary hat off to him, making him laugh a little. 

"Anytime. But, uh, why did you lie to Chelsea? Isn't she your best friend?" Noah asks in a more serious tone. April sighs at the question and shifts in her seat. 

"She is my best friend. I just... I don't want her to worry about me and Lucas. And she's just so happy with Henrik and everything, and I don't want to upset her with my crap. I know it's stupid but-" She starts but Noah cuts her off. 

"It's not stupid. I get it, it's okay. You don't have to tell her if you don't want to." Noah says interrupting her. 

"Thank you again." She says to him. Just as Chelsea said it would, the music starts to come from the speakers a few feet away from them. There's an upbeat song on and people start getting up and dancing.

April sighs. Noah looks at her, she looks sad as she watches all the people at her party dancing. "What's wrong?" Noah asks. 

April looks back to Noah and tries to smile but it doesn't take. "It's nothing... we just had planned this whole dancing thing and now Lucas is I don't know where so..." She trails off and sighs again. 

Noah scratches the back of his head as he looks at her. He doesn't like that look on her face. He never liked it when she wasn't happy. Even though he wasn't a comedian like Bobby, he had always tried to get her laughing again when she was upset. He remembers how unhappy she was when he had brought Blake back from the villa. He hated himself for making her that unhappy. He hated that he couldn't fix it. 

There wasn't much he could do to make that better back then, but he could try to fix this situation now. He smiles as an idea pops into his head. He stands up and holds out his hand. 

"What are you doing?" April says, looking at the way he's standing. 

"I'm cheering you up." He says with a smile on his face. "Come on, let's dance."

"No, no, I couldn't possibly..." She says but mouth is curved into a smile as she looks at him. 

"Come on! April, no one is gonna judge you for dancing at your own party."

"For that no, for dancing with someone who is not my fiancé... yes." She says, looking around the room at all the people who she thinks are going to judge her. 

"If they do, you can blame it on me. We'll say that I couldn't possibly sit there when the bride-to-be was looking like that." He says, which was the truth. She opens her mouth, surely to state another reason not to do it, but Noah stops her. "I know you have a million arguments you're coming up with in your head but just come dance with me. Your fight was bad, but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy the rest of the night." 

He holds out his hand to her again. April breathes out and takes his hand as she stands up. Noah grins as they move to the dance floor. The make it there and stand there for a moment awkwardly while the music plays. 

"So?" Noah raises his hands in confusion. 

"So what?" April laughs at him. 

"Are you gonna dance or are we just gonna stand here?" He asks her. She mumbles a little 'fine' and starts dancing a little, moving with her dress. He's still grinning at her as he starts to move his shoulders and feet a little bit. 

"I forgot how much of a dorky dancer you are." Noah says, watching her dance moves. 

April gasps. "I am not a dorky dancer at all!" April says as she moves her shoulders and brings out her hands in a weird way. 

"You totally are, look at that move you just did!" 

"Fine. Maybe I am a dorky dancer." April says. They laugh together as they dance to the music. 

After a while, they lose track of time as they laugh and dance with everyone around them. Suddenly, the rhythm of the music changes into a slow song and couples start to form on the dance floor. 

April stops dancing and looks back to the bar. She looks back to Noah and he has his hand out once again, ready to dance. "Don't be weird about it." He says to her, not wanting her to overthink it all again. She hesitates for moment but to his surprise, she doesn't argue with him or walk away. She just smiles and places her hand in his. 

They sway back and forth to the slow music. The song changes and April smiles as they listen to 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' by Simon & Garfunkel. 

"This was my mum's favorite song when she was young." She says as they continue to dance. 

"Yeah?" Noah says, looking at her.

"Yeah. She always says she named me April because of the song 'April Come She Will.'" 

"You weren't named April cause you were born in April?" Noah questions. 

"Well yeah, that too." She says simply. Noah chuckles a little at that. 

"But I remember when I was young, she played me her old records when I couldn't sleep. There was just something so comforting and relaxing to the lyrics. It just gave you a feeling of... safety." Noah closes his eyes and listens to the lyrics of the song. 

"It's why I wanted to write my own music. I wanted to write the kind of music that made me feel safe and comforted as a kid." She says, her brown eyes sparkling a little. "My dad said it was pipe dream, after all - making it as a musician isn't an easy task. But my mum, she always believed in me. I don't think I even believed in myself back then, but she did." April pauses, looking at her feet. "I don't know why I'm telling you this, it's stupid." 

"It's not stupid. Why do you think that the things you say are stupid?" He asks her, remembering she said that before. 

"I just don't feel like anyone cares about my little stories. Whenever I go on a little tangent on something, Lucas just nods his head and moves on to another topic." 

Noah scoffs at this - _how could anyone think she wasn't interesting _\- he thinks.__

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"Well, your stories are not stupid and I like hearing them. You can tell them to me all you want." 

April smiles shyly at him and whispers a quiet 'thank you'. 

"When did you know you wanted to be a librarian?" She asks him, returning to the topic from before. 

"I don't know... I really liked reading as a kid, more so than playing sports, and when I went to university, nothing else really interested me all that much. To be honest, I don't think I ever really wanted to be anything. My career was never a big thing for me. Just love and family, that's all I've ever wanted. It's all I'll ever want." 

"That's one of your Noah-isms, huh?" April says, making Noah laugh a little. 

"What's that?" He asks her, grinning. 

"It's like something that makes you special and different from other people." 

"That's not a thing, you made that up." 

"Yeah you caught me. I totally made it up." She says, giggling a bit. "But everyone has little -isms. Things they believe in and make up parts of their personality. Things that make up who a person is." 

"Yeah, like how you're a know-it-all." 

"I am not a know-it-all! I just happen to know a lot and like to inform other people of the knowledge I have."

Noah shakes his head and laughs at her. "Totally a know-all-it."

After a while, their conversation dies out and they return to focus on dancing. 

More time passes and more people leave the dance floor. April yawns and puts her head on Noah's shoulder. Noah shifts as he looks around the room. 

"April, people are watching." Noah says quietly, remembering what she said before about people judging her.

"I don't care. I'm tired and your shoulder is about the closest thing to pillow I can see right now." 

"Do you want to go back to the bar or..." Noah trails off as he looks at her. 

"No. Is this okay with you?" 

"Yeah. Actually it's uh... it's just fine." He smiles as looks down at her. He sways to he music while he holds her up. He starts thinking to himself about what Hope had said earlier. About how he looks at April. 

_"Do you still have feelings for her?"_ Her words ring in his ears. Noah still didn't know. April was the best part of his night and he felt like he could spend forever talking to her. Hell, he could spend a whole lifetime just holding her like this and he would be perfectly happy. 

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But none of that mattered. Even though Hope and Noah fought, they were still together. And she was engaged to another guy. 

Another guy who just came into the room, assumingly to look for the girl he's dancing with right now.

"April, come on, wake up." He whispers, moving his shoulder a little bit to wake her up. 

"Ugh, why?" She groans. 

"Lucas." Noah says, looking at the guy from across the room, moving towards the bar. He turns back from the bar and scans the room, looking for April.

April looks around and finds Lucas's eyeline. Lucas scoffs and shakes his head a tiny bit as he sees her dancing with Noah. He then starts to walk away from the room. 

"Lucas, wait." She stutters out as she chases after him. She catches up to him and they land at the little table they were fighting at before. Lucas starts raising his arms again and Noah can see that they're fighting again. 

Noah moves over to the bar and tells the bartender his drink. He watches April and Lucas as the guy prepares it. He looks at April's face as she tries her best to calm him down. She looks miserable. Noah sighs and looks back at the bartender. 

"Excuse me." He says to the guy behind the bar. Before he can think about it more, Noah's feet are moving towards her and him and the little table they're fighting at. He can hear a bit of their conversation as he makes his way over there. 

"I come here to make up with you, say I'm sorry and that I was stupid, and you're here on the dance floor with that guy?"

"I'm sorry! I don't know what I can say or do to fix this or make you feel better! It just happened and I'm sorry!"

Noah finally makes it to their table and interrupts Lucas as he just about to respond to April. "It was my fault. I asked her to dance, she said no at first and I pushed it. Don't blame her." 

"Noah, stop." April says after he's done. "I can fight my own battles." 

"No, I know that. It's just... it was innocent, trust me, there's nothing going on here. There's nothing to be mad at. She didn't do anything wrong."

"Man, you really shouldn't be talking to me right now." Lucas says angrily. 

"I'm didn't come over here to fight you, Lucas. I'm just trying to tell you the truth, nothing happened." 

"Why the hell should I believe that?" Lucas shouts, his anger spilling out. Noah looks around the room and sees many people looking up to Lucas' shouting. Lucas quickly realizes this and shifts in his stance. 

Lucas sighs. "I can't deal with this right now. I'm just gonna go take a walk, and we can talk later okay?" He says quietly, his eyes on April's. 

"Okay. Are we okay?" She asks, concerned about the safety of her relationship.

"I don't know." Lucas says, running a hand through his hair. He whispers goodbye to her and walks away. 

April sighs and cocks her head back in frustration. "Noah, why did you do that?" 

"He shouldn't be mad at you, April, we didn't do anything! It was just dancing. And if he has to be mad, I'd rather it be directed at me rather than you." 

"Why? I can deal with him, I'm not a freaking damsel in distress, Noah!" 

"You're absolutely not. I know you're not that. I just I don't like it when you're unhappy, and you look _so _unhappy when you're fighting with him." Noah says, remember her face when he was yelling at her.__

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April sighs as she realizes he's right. "I am unhappy when we fight. It really really sucks." She admits. 

"I know. I'm sorry if I made it any worse." Noah says with remorse and sympathy in his voice.

"It's okay." She breathes out. "He would've still been mad at me if you hadn't have come over here." 

They sit there in silence for a moment, unsure of what there is left to say. Time stops as Noah looks at her. Her brown eyes that are usually so full of life are filled to the brim with sadness and exhaustion. 

"I'm so sorry, April." Noah repeats as he looks at her. 

"It's fine, I'm gonna be fine." She sniffles a little as she looks down. "You can go if you want. The party's pretty much over, anyway so..." She trails off as she looks around at some of the empty seats. 

"Are you sure you'll be okay?" He asks, concerned about her. 

"Yeah. I'll be just peachy." She says, smiling weakly. "Here, I'll walk you out." She says, looking towards the door.

They make their way over to the exit and Noah grabs his coat from the coat check. 

"Hey for what it's worth, I loved talking to you tonight. It was the best part of my day." Noah says to her as he stands next to the door. April smiles, a genuine one, back at him. 

"Me too." She says simply. 

"Bye, April." He says, smiling at her as he opens the door. "I hope to see you sooner rather than later, but I'm fine with either." 

"I'll see you sometime then, Noah" 

"Is that another one of your made up phrases?" 

She chuckles slightly as she looks at him. "Just go with it, okay?" 

"See you sometime, April." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There it is! Hope you guys liked it and there'll be more to come!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> beta reader - margotmuses  
> Hi! So this is Chapter 7! It's not the greatest chapter, not a ton is happening in it and it's a bit short, but I hope you guys like it!

April wakes up suddenly, startled by the alarm going off. She sighs as she looks at the time on the clock. She has to get up. Usually she never wanted to go back to bed and was an early riser, but today was different. Her and Lucas had stayed up late talking things through. It had been a week since the engagement party, and Lucas was still upset about everything. Things were a little bit better, but not by much. She looks over to the space on the bed next to her. Empty. Lucas must've gone to work already. April turns on her phone and immediately sees a text from Chelsea. 

Chelsea: make sure to make the copies today!!!! :)

_God, she was even bubbly in text messages _, April thinks.__

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__As she reads the text message, she remembers why she had an alarm set today - Chelsea had asked her to do something for her. See, Chelsea had loved planning April's engagement party so much that she wanted to give it a try as a potential career. So, she came up with the idea that she would plan little events and party things for the Love Island crew that she would use as a little trial period for her party planning. She came to talk to April the other day about it and she had asked her to print out invitations and itineraries to give to all their friends.__

____

____

And since April didn't know how to the use the printer at her work, she had decided to go to the library to do it. She also knew there was a good chance that if she'd do that, she'd see Noah again. But she wasn't doing it because of that. She was doing it because Chelsea, who was her best friend, asked her to. At least, that's what she told herself.

She quickly gets dressed and is out of the door by 8:40am. She gets in her car and starts it up. As she does so, she starts thinking about Noah and the whole engagement party. Everything, besides Lucas coming in at the end, was practically perfect that night. April was happy that night. She didn't feel all the regrets like she had before, she just was enjoying the moment. She felt better than she had in a long time. But when Lucas came into the picture, everything just got so messy. 

Lucas was always going to in the picture, though, he was her fiancé. She was getting married to him. The whole Noah thing should just go away. It'll get in the way of her relationship with Lucas. Just being friends, which is exactly what they were now, was making Lucas upset. Even with knowing how upset Lucas was, April pulled her car in to the library, knowing there was a chance that this was Noah's library and he could be there. 

April parks her car close to the door and gets out of it. She notices the leaves falling around her as she slowly makes her way towards the door. 

There's a woman talking to the person behind the counter so April stands there for a moment awkwardly. She looks around the library, looking for a familiar face, but doesn't find one. No Noah. Oh well, she thinks, that's not why she was here anyway, right?

"Hi! Do you have a printer or something here?" She asks the woman behind the counter as soon as the other woman leaves.

She points to the back corner of the library near some bookshelves where a computer is sitting next to a printer. 

April raises an eyebrow, a bit confused, but moves over to it, determined to figure it out. 

April makes her way to the computer and starts reading the directions that are taped to the table. 

"What are you doing here?" A familiar voice comes up behind her as she reads, making her jump. 

She turns to see Noah grinning and laughing a little at her jumpiness. 

"Hey, stop it." She blushes, embarrassed by this. He continues laughing and smiling for a little while and she punches him in the arm. 

"Alright, alright, fine, I'll stop. It was just so funny, you practically jumped like a cat!" 

"You scared me! Expect that when you are sneaking up on people who are reading!" She says, smiling widely. 

"Okay, okay." He looks over at the computer and realizes where they are. "Oh yeah, what are you doing here, April?" 

"Chelsea asked me to print something for her. And I don't know how to use the printer at work and I don't have one at home so..." She trails off, not giving any more explanation. 

"You're here to print something? What is it?" He says as he looks down at what's holding. 

"It's confidential, I cannot possibly show you." She says, smirking a little, remembering what Chelsea told her about not telling people until the invitations mailed out. 

"Come on." He says as he tries to grab it out of her hands. She's quick though, and raises it above her head. 

"No! You're not supposed to read it!" She says, now on tiptoes and moving the paper behind her head. 

"April, I'm taller than you." He says chuckling and then snatching the paper away from her. 

"Ugh, fine! But you can't tell her I gave it to you, she will literally kill me!" She says, turning back to the computer as Noah reads the paper.

"You're printing invitations?" Noah questions. 

"And itineraries." April says, reaching inside of her purse to show him the other paper she's supposed to print. She hands it over to him as soon as she gets it out. 

"And itineraries." He repeats, reading the second sheet. "What's it all about?"

"Well, it seems Chelsea has found a bit of a passion with party planning. She planned all these events for all of us, you know, Love Island people. Non-mandatory, of course, she wants to make that clear. We are her guinea pigs, but we can choose to opt out of the experiments any time we want." She explains clearly. 

"And you're printing invitations and itineraries for her? What are you, her secretary or something?" He says, teasing her.

"No, I'm just being a good friend. She wanted to try something new and I wanna support it." April says as she shrugs.

"Alright. Now, what kind of events are we looking at here, Miss Secretary?"

"Halloween, A Christmas eve eve party, you know, the basics." 

He nods his head, looking down at the paper again. 

"And it would be Mrs. Secretary, if you want to go into the grammar of it all." She says, holding up the ring on her left hand ring finger. 

"Yes, Mrs., you are getting married." He says, looking away from her. "You _are _still getting married, right?"__

____

____

"Yeah, of course, why wouldn't I?" She asks quietly. 

"You and Lucas weren't on the best terms when I left you." He pauses, looking at April nodding her head. "How are you two doing, by the way?" 

"We're doing just fine, it's all going just fine." She says, using her common answer for that question.

Noah nods but after a minute opens his mouth to say something. 

"April, come on, that's not an honest answer. You say you're fine to about every 'how are you doing' that you're asked. Some of the time, it might be true, but it's clearly not here so just tell me the truth."

April inhales sharply and sighs. "He's still mad at me and I don't know what I'm supposed to do to fix that." She says, her hands flopping down to her slides.

"So I am here, trying to focus on something more positive and productive." She says, gathering her papers and putting on a fake smile. 

"Lemme show you how the printer works." He says, smiling sympathetically at her. 

"Noah, you don't have to do that. You're at work, don't you have a bookshelf to attend to?" 

"This is part of my job, showing people how to work printers. Real riveting stuff, lemme show you." He says, moving towards the computer. 

"Fine." April says, the corners of her mouth forming a shy smile. 

The smile stays on her face the whole time while Noah shows her how it all works and they print 30 copies of Chelsea's invitations and itineraries. 

"Why did Chelsea want you to print all these out, couldn't she just send out like a digital invitation or something?" Noah asks as the printer shuffles out the copies one by one. 

"It felt more official, she said. Plus she's been reading all this spooky stuff lately, you know to get into the Halloween mood, and she thinks that hackers are going to get into our emails and then come to our parties and kill us. Her words." 

"She's crazy." He says as he grins and laughs. 

"Yes, she is." April says, smiling widely and laughing a little along with him. 

"So is she really doing this party planning thing? Like for real?" Noah asks her. 

"I don't know, she just wanted to try to out. She might actually do it, she might not. She wanted to try something new." April explains. 

"You know, it's fun to try something new. It's exciting and awesome and... you're not just stuck, you've got something that drives you forward. Into the unknown." April says, remembering what it was like when she first became a musician. 

"I've never been able to do that. I can't go into something not knowing exactly how it's going to go." Noah says back to her.

April remembers that about him. The reason she had broken it off with him was because of his indecisiveness. The one time Noah had made up his mind was at the switch or stick recoupling when he had chose not to be with her. She had liked him, more than any guy she had been with, but she had to be with someone who choose to be with her.

"What's wrong?" Noah asks her, concerned as she stares down at the ground. "Did I do anything?"

"No, no, I'm okay. You didn't do anything, it's all fine." She pauses, looking at him. His eyes have that concerned look in them again and she knows he doesn't believe her. 

"I was just remembering things, you know, for back then. About how you were... kind of indecisive." She says, telling the truth.

Noah sighs, realizing what she's upset about. "April, I'm sorry..." He trails off. 

The printer makes a loud noise, indicating it was done with making the copies, returning their attention to what they were doing before.

April breathes in sharply and takes the copies out of the printer. She puts them into her purse and slings it over her shoulder. 

"I should probably go, I have a songwriting session to get to and you should probably get back to work." 

"Yeah, um, I'll walk you out." He says awkwardly. 

April smiles slightly, and follows him towards the door. They make it outside and stand there for a moment, unsure of what to say. 

"So I'll see you..." He says, expecting her to finish with when they'll see each other next. 

April tries to remember the first event on the party planning schedule but she can't think of it. She takes out the invitation and looks at the first bulletin point. 

"Weekend Trip, October 23rd-25th." She laughs a little as she realizes that's all that it says. 

"October 23rd." Noah repeats, smiling at her laughing. "I'll see you then." 

April waves a little and starts to walk away, but as soon as she does, she remembers she still had something to say to him. 

"Thanks for the gift, the money you guys gave us for the engagement party." 

Noah tips his head and scrunches his eyebrows, confused on why she's telling him this.

"One less thank you card." She quickly explains. He laughs, but stops, remembering something as well. 

"Wait here." He says, then runs towards what April assumes is his car. April sees him grab something and run back to her.

"I know we already gave you money, but I saw this in a convenience store the other day and I, uh, thought of you." He says, handing her something. 

She looks down to find a CD of Simon & Garfunkel Greatest Hits and instantly smiles widely. 

"I figured you would probably have one already, but just in case you ever get stranded or something..." He says, chuckling a little. "Do you like it?" 

"I love it, thank you." She says, smiling and holding her arms out for a hug. He smiles back at her and wraps his arms around her. 

It feels safe and familiar, like leaning on an old blanket after being on a long vacation. It feels just like it was before. Like old times. 

But she realizes it's not as she looks down at the ring on her finger. It's not old times, they're not in the villa and the guy who gave her that ring would be mad if he saw this. She pulls away from the hug quickly. 

"Well, I better go..." She says after they both pull away. 

"Yeah. I guess I'll see you on October 23rd." 

"Yes, October 23rd." She repeats after him. 

"Bye, April." He says, smiling at her as he stands at the door. 

"Bye, Noah."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There it is! I hope you guys enjoyed it and thank you for reading!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> beta reader - margotmuses  
> Hi! This was meant to be posted yesterday, but as usual i'm very busy and kind of mess so it didn't. This chapter is a little long, but I hope you guys like it and thank you for reading! :)

Noah practically runs to his car when he gets off work and opens those big library doors.

Today was the day. October 23rd. He was going on a trip today. 

He speeds (not actually though) to his home and starts packing as soon as he gets through the door. He reads through the email Chelsea had sent to all the people who RSVPed, detailing all the things they would be doing and all the stuff they had to bring. 

Noah, for some reason, jumped at the chance to be around people he hadn't seen in almost a year. He was going to a log cabin of sorts - willingly - and was excited to do so. 

He quickly scans the list of people coming as he packs his clothes into an old duffle bag. Not everyone had RSVPed, obviously, some of them were too busy and had lives and reasons not to go. But there were a few people on the list, the ones who didn't have lives, that Noah would be pleased to see.

He smiles as he reaches April's name on the list of people who are coming. He can't help but notice that her name isn't followed by Lucas'. He isn't too suprised by this, he assumed Lucas wasn't the type to do a weekend like this. To be fair, Noah wasn't exactly the type to do a weekend like this, but he thought he'd try something new. And there was the added plus that April was going to be there and he would be able to talk to her again. But that wasn't the reason he was doing this... well, at least not the only reason. 

He is on his way to his car once again and decides to call Hope on his way over there. He dials her number on his phone and puts it on speaker in his car. He breathes in and out, preparing himself to talk to her. Since the party, they barely talked anymore. A few calls on the phone was all Noah had gotten from her in the past few weeks. 

"Hello?" Hope picks up and says, with annoyance present in her voice.

"Hey, how are you?" He asks her. 

"Fine. What about you?" She asks back plainly. 

"I'm good actually. Uh, I'm going to that cabin thing this weekend. You know, the thing that Chelsea's doing." He says as he pulls out of his parking spot. 

"Oh. You're really doing that? I didn't think you'd go for that." She says, surprised, but not changing the monotone in her voice. 

"Yeah, I am. It seemed like it'd be fun, and some of our friends will be there too."

Hope doesn't say anything for a moment, but the silence doesn't last for long. 

"Is _she_ going to be there?" She asks with bitterness and distain coming into her voice.

"Yes, yes she is. But Hope, there isn't anything going on. We're just friends now and-" He says but is interuptted mid-sentence by her. 

"You can just save it. Whatever your explanation is, I don't want to hear it." She says angerily, hanging up the phone on him after she's finished. 

He sighs at the abrupt ending of the call. He decides to not worry about it right now and focuses on his driving. The drive is a bit on the long side, but Noah doesn't mind all that much. The time passes quickly, and it isn't too long before Noah's pulling into the road that the cabin is on. 

He gets out of his car and takes a good look at the place he'll be staying the next two days. It's not the fanciest cabin on the outside, after all - Chelsea was paying for this out of her own pocket with April helping only a tiny bit, but it still looked nice to stay in and the sunset was shining across a beautiful lake. 

He walks up to the door and knocks. He hears an 'I'll get it' coming from the inside and the door opens to reveal April standing there. 

Somehow she looks even prettier than the last time he saw her. He didn't know how or if that is possible, but looking at her, he thinks it might be. Her hair was down this time and she looks more casual in a sweater and jeans.

"Hi." He says, smiling brightly down at her. 

"Hey." She says, returning his smile right back. 

"Can I come in?" He says, holding up his duffle bag. 

"Yeah, course." She says, moving to the side to let him pass. "There's a couple people here I think you'll know." 

He looks around the room at all the people there. Henrik and Chelsea were on bar stools at a kitchen island, Priya was sitting on a chair next to the couch and Lottie and Gary were sitting together on the couch. 

Chelsea pulls away from Henrik and runs up to greet Noah as he stands there, taking it all in. 

"Hello! Welcome to our little weekend away!" She says enthusiastically. 

"As you can see, there's Lottie, Priya, Gary, Henrik and Hannah, who is writing in one of the rooms." He waves to everyone around the room. They all say a quick hello to him. 

"There's 4 rooms, most of them are already claimed, there is one left though. Twin beds, but you'd be bunking with April. If that's okay with you two."

Chelsea looks to the two of them, seeking their approval. Noah's eyes meet April's and he just shrugs. 

"I'm okay with it if you're okay with it." He says simply. 

"Yeah I guess but... don't you snore? Very loudly, I recall." She says. 

"Yeah, well, you wake up really early, I recall." He says, repeating the words she used. He remembers she was up before him almost everyday back in the villa. 

Chelsea chuckles a little at their conversation. 

"What, are you having a 'who's sleeping habits are worse' competition?" She asks. 

"Yours are worse." April mumbles under her breath, a smile on her face. He laughs a little at that. 

"I'll sleep on the couch if it bothers you too much, okay?" He says quietly to her. 

"Yeah, okay." She whispers quietly back. 

Noah asks Chelsea which room it is and she points to the last one down the hall. Noah quickly makes his way over there and drops off his stuff. 

He walks back on into the living room and takes a seat next to April on the floor. 

"Hey, guys." He says to Lottie, Gary and Priya who are all sitting near them. They all quickly wave at him. 

They all sit in slience for a moment, unsure of what to do or say. They hadn't seen each other in about a year, it was bound to get awkward. 

"Guys! I got a text!" April says, breaking the silence between all of them. 

"Did you actually?" He asks her, smiling as he looks at her. 

"Yeah, I did. It was Chelsea telling me to say something." She says, showing him the text and making him laugh a little. 

Chelsea scoffs at them. "Thanks for telling on me, April."

April just shrugs casually at her in response. 

"Alright, people, we should do something! Does anyone have any ideas?" Chelsea says, clapping her hands together, gathering their attention. 

"Ooh, we could do tarot cards. I have some in my bag." Lottie says, sat up fully ready to go and grab them. 

"Okay, that's a possibility. What else?" Chelsea asks, looking around the room. 

"Drinking game?" Priya suggests.

"There's board games in one of the closets." Henrik says, moving over towards the closet. "Also whiteboards and markers for some reason." He says, as he opens the doors of the closet. 

"Ooh, I have an idea. We played a game in summer camp where someone picks a topic, you throw around a marker, and whoever has the marker has to say something on that topic." April suggests excitedly

"I've never heard of that before. Does that even qualify as a game?" Noah asks her. 

"I don't know, we were just really bored and all we had was a marker." She says, giggling a little bit, remembering that moment. 

"So, you just throw a topic out there and someone has to come up with... what?" Chelsea asks, confused as to how it works. 

"Well, one of the things was worst conselor but we could do worst ex or something then the person with the marker has to tell us about their worst ex." April explains. 

Chelsea thinks for a moment, but then shakes her head quickly. 

"Come on, Chels, it's fun! We don't even have to play it that long if it isn't."

"I'm in. Sounds fun, spilling tea about our exs, that's what I do with my besties when we get drunk. Plus, I can cast a few spells on your worst exes if you want." Lottie agrees to doing the game. 

"See? We're even gonna throw out some spells, it'll be a blast!" April says, trying to get Chelsea on board. Chelsea stays quiet though, still unsure of it. 

"Everyone who likes my game and wants to do it, say I." She says, crossing her arms. 

A bunch of 'I's come from around the room, including Noah's. April smirks at Chelsea, awaiting her answer.

"Fine, we can play it. Henrik, get the marker." 

April claps her hands together and moves her shoulders up and down. Noah smiles as he watches her do a little happy dance. 

_She's so adorable_ , he thinks, it's obvious why she was the fan favorite. 

Noah knew the people had adored Lucas, but he always thought the reason Lucas and April had won was because of her. Because she was the funniest, dorkiest, greatest girl that had ever been on that show. 

"What?" April says, noticing him staring at her, snapping him out of his thoughts. 

"Nothing." He says quickly, giving her a reassuring smile.

"Okay, first topic. Worst exes. You throw the marker at someone, they have to answer. I will go first." April says, standing up. 

Noah sits up, interested in hearing April's answer to that topic.

Henrik throws April the stick and she catches it. 

"Okay, um, worst ex. I dated this guy named Evan during my second year and it ended - to make a long story short - very explosively." She says vaguely.

Noah wonders what happened but April looks hesistant to talk about it so he doesn't ask her anything.

She quickly smiles at him sitting next to her and throws him the marker. 

"Worst ex, uh... god this is kind of hard." He says, searching his brain for his worst ex-girlfriend while everyone is staring at him.

"My first girlfriend, Amanda, broke up with me over voicemail." He nods as he hears an 'ouch' coming from Lottie. 

"But honestly, none of my exes were horrible or bad people so..." He trails off and throws the marker to Lottie who immediately starts going on a tangent about an ex named Connor. 

"Do I count as a non-horrible person?" She whispers to him as Lottie starts talking. 

"Course' you do. Why wouldn't you?" He asks her back.

"I don't know. We ended kind of explosively so..." She trails off like he did before, staring at the ground. 

"Yeah, we kinda did, didn't we?" He says, remembering that night.

He remembers what he felt during the days after that night of the terrance. He wished he would take it all back, he wished that he would suddenly become a time traveler to go back and make different choices that day. 

And in some ways, he still feels like that to this very moment. He still wondered if he got to take it all back, would everything be different? Would things be better? 

"Very explosively." April says, bringing him back to their conversation.

She brings her hand up to the side of her head and imitates a bomb, making Noah grin.

"But we're good now, right?" April says, her voice wavering with a bit of insecurity. 

"Yeah, totally good." He says, patting her knee as an act of reassurance. 

They smile at each other but turn back to the group and their conversation. Lottie was, unsuprisingly, still going on with her story. 

"...and I was watching a show that night and they were burning stuff of ex boyfriends and this girl comes over, totally pissed, she starts ranting and then she notices what's happening on the TV. Then she thinks I'm gonna burn his stuff and accuses me of being a witch, which I very obviously am..." 

Lottie goes on, rambling about her ex's girlfriend coming over to her flat to give her a piece of her mind. 

The group passes the stick around the circle, telling stories of past lovers and friends, enjoying being in each others company. 

This goes on for quite a while as each of them get into their own personal stories, but it finally ends with one last story of Lottie's witch adventures.

"So that's the whole story." Lottie finishes with the story and places the marker on the glass table in front of her. 

Noah looks at the clock on the wall and realizes hours have passed since he got there. They all mutter something about heading to bed except April who starts to move towards the door. 

"Where you going?" He asks, trailing along after her. 

"I was gonna go for a little walk. You can see the stars better here than you can in the city." She says, moving over to the coat rack and taking her light coat off the rack. 

"Alright, well, I'll come with you." He says, moving towards her, grabbing his coat as well. 

"Noah, I'm fine. I'm just going for a walk, I can do that by myself perfectly fine." She says as she pulls the coat on and smooths her hair back. 

"Didn't say you weren't fine. I want to see the stars, that's all. I mean, you can totally see them better out here." He says, smiling down at her. 

"Yeah, okay." She smiles back at him as he opens the door for them. They walk out the door and start strolling down the dirt road. 

April stops for moment, getting lost into all the stars they could see so clearly out there. 

"I was in an astronomy class when I was younger. They taught us that some stars were just as bright as others, but they were further away so they seem more dim to our eyes." She says as she moves around, taking it all in. 

"Sometimes I think that might be the thing with people, too. Like some people might seem more outgoing and bright, but others shine just as bright, they are just more in the background." 

"Yeah, maybe." He says as he looks at her, memerized by her eyes and the reflection of the stars in them.

"I read in a book somewhere that we become stars and I thought that was interesting." He says, trying to add something to their conversation.

April starts walking down the road again and Noah follows her. 

"When I was a kid, I used to think I was a star. I thought that each star made up a star on earth - like maybe that one-" She points up at a random star up in the sky. 

"-was Barbra Streisand or Patti Lupone or something." She chuckles a little as she thinks about it. He chuckles and smiles along with her as they walk side by side. 

She turns to look at him and blushes a little, as if she just realized he was there. 

"Sorry, caught up in the moment. Went on a tangent again." She apologizes. 

"Hey, remember what I said, you don't need to apologize for being who you are and talking about your life. I like it."

"Thank you." She says quietly, smiling at him and his kindness. 

"Now, you were saying something about thinking the stars were actual stars..." He says, ready for her to pick her topic back up.

"Yes, well, I thought that if you were a star, you actually were a star up there. Or you maybe would be if you died. I don't know, it was a very loose theory..." She goes on talking about her thoughts and Noah listens intently the whole time nodding and smiling. 

They continue walking and reach a creek running under them. They move over to the side, where there is a little railing but not much. 

"Just be careful, okay? We don't have a flashlight." He says, concerned as she looks over the creek. 

She breathes in and out slowly as she turns around and looks at the stars.

"You know, earlier, when we were talking about worst exes... I was a little afraid that was gonna be me." Noah admits to her. 

"No, no, worst breakup maybe. Never worst ex. Worst ex applies to bad boyfriends that lie to you and you never did that, did you?" She says, her voice a bit bitter and Noah can tell she's thinking of specific person. 

"If you don't mind me asking... what happened with your worst ex? You didn't really go into it." 

"He cheated on me." She sighs as she stares at the dirt ground. "Well, that's not the whole story. There was this girl who started to come around his dorm more and more and when I asked about it, he told me she was just a friend. Then, I came over early one day and you can probably imagine the rest." 

"That sucks, I'm sorry." He breathes out. 

"Don't be. It got me this far anyway..." She says, making Noah furrow his eyebrows in confusion. "A few years later, I saw them together at one of my out of town gigs and it all came rushing back. So my bandmates and I got drunk and they convinced me to apply for Love Island." She explains, then pauses, trying to come up with the right words. 

"And I think if I didn't experience all that, if I didn't get burned like that, maybe I wouldn't have all this. Chelsea, Lucas, all friends I've made." 

"That's a good way to look at it." He says, admiring her way of thinking. 

"Yeah, I guess it is." She smiles a little and shrugs.

"It's getting late, we probably should head inside." She says, looking at her phone and it's time. 

"Shall we?" He says, holding out an arm. 

"Shall we? Have you been reading Jane Austen books again?" She questions him, noticing the words he used.

He chuckles a little at the question. 

"Yes, yes I have." He says grinning again. 

"Now, Madame, shall we?" He asks, holding out his arm once again. 

"Yes, Monsieur, so we shall." She says as she links her arm in his, like they're the people in one of those books. 

They quickly make their way to the house and put their coats on the coat rack when they get in the door. 

They go to the the room down the hall and they take their turns using the bathroom, like summer camp. Noah shuts the light switch off and then flops on to the bed they decided was his. 

"Night, Noah." April whispers from the other side of the room. 

"Goodnight, April." He whispers back. 

He stares at the celing for a while, sleeping not coming easily for him tonight. He starts thinking about all that's happened today. 

Not a lot did, in theory, but all the moments he had with April make it seem like something did. Every single moment with her was perfect. 

He admits to himself the real reason he went on this trip. It was to see her. It wasn't because he wanted to see Chelsea, or Lottie or even Gary for that matter. It wasn't because he needed a change of scenerary or because he suddenly felt the urge to try something new. It was only to see her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit: okay I'm trying to clear up any plot holes or stupid things that I've written so here we go for this chapter. In the beginning of this one, Noah reads an email by Chelsea detailing all the stuff for the trip and in the last chapter, Chelsea was sending out invations and iterinaries instead of sending digital copies. And there's a line in there about her not wanting to do digital stuff but i put in the email part in this chapter so there's kind of a plothole there. So let's just say that April convinced her to send an email and Chelsea did it so yeah there's your little explanation!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> beta reader - margotmuses  
> Helloo! Sorry this chapter is up a bit late, I meant to have this chapter up earlier in the week but oral exams suck and the writing kinda got put on hold. I am planning to write a halloween chapter, it's just gonna be posted after halloween has past and I hope you guys will all be okay with that. Anyways, I hope you guys like this chapter and thanks for reading!  
> Edit: I am very very stupid and totally forgot Henrik had said the i love you thing in a speech the engagement party, but anyway I changed that part and keep the i love you thing here. Sorry if that was confusing for those who read it before I changed it, which is probably all of you, I'm stupid and don't remember certain things!

April wakes up to Noah's incessant snoring and sighs quietly. She grabs her phone from the nightstand sitting next to her and checks the time. 7:30. She must've slept pretty good, usually she's up by at least 6:30.

She opens up her phone and sees three missed calls from Lucas. All from last night, one where he left a voicemail. April plays it and puts her phone to her ear. 

"Hey, babe, you aren't picking up right now and that's fine. I just wanted to see how you were. If you're wondering how I am, it's, uh, not very good. I miss you. I miss us. I miss when things were good..." He pauses and sighs. "I guess that's my fault, isn't it? Anyway, I miss you and I'll see you soon, love." 

April drops her phone to her side and feels totally guility. 

Guilty - for making him mad and continuing to be around Noah even though she knew it was making Lucas upset. 

It's just that... she felt happy when she was with Noah. The smiles they shared, the stolen glances... when she was with him, her heart felt happy. 

But then she thinks about how Lucas would feel watching them share smiles and glances and she feels horrible again. 

She sighs and gets out of bed carefully and quietly, so as to not wake Noah up. 

She goes to the kitchen to make herself a cuppa. Then, after she's had her jolt in the morning, she'll call Lucas and talk to him. Maybe then she'll feel a bit better. 

"Hey, babes." Chelsea says to her as she walks into the kitchen, surprising April. 

She's sitting on one of the bar stools and holding a mug with coffee. 

"Jeez, Chelsea! What are you doing up this early?" She says, hand to her chest, surprised. 

"I couldn't sleep. Henrik told me he loved me last night!" She says happly, putting her coffee mug down and grinning widely. 

"Holy shit. Babes, I'm so happy for you! This is a good thing, right?" April says, hugging her best friend tightly. 

"What, are you kidding? Of course this is a good thing! It was perfect, we were just going to bed and we were just kind of doing our normal thing, you know, and I quickly kissed him goodnight and he says goodnight back and then he blurts out an 'i love you'!" Chelsea says, practically jumping up and up in excitement and happiness. 

"Ah, that's such a cute story, babes." April says as she moves to get a mug out of the cupboard. "Be one to tell the grandkids. I mean, if you want them. If not, you could just tell the story to the friends you play bridge with at the old folks home. Either way, you guys are adorable." 

"Yeah, we totally are. I mean, I love him. I don't know if I ever was in love like this." 

"I'm so happy for you, hun." April says, as she pours coffee into a mug. 

"When did you say it with Lucas?" Chelsea asks, curious. 

"He told me after the Happily Ever After challenge, remember? I didn't say it back though, I didn't say it until our final date on Love Island." She says, remembering him being mad at her when she didn't say it back right away. 

"Why didn't you say it that day?" Chelsea asks her.

"I don't know... I'd been burned before by guys who told me they loved me. I needed to know that he was trustworthy and that I wasn't just a pawn to win the money or the fame. And when he made a commitment to me by asking me to his girlfriend, I just finally felt it." She says, explaining her side. 

"I guess that makes sense." Chelsea says as she nods and brings her mug up to her face to take a sip of coffee. 

"Yeah, but it's not totally cute story like yours. I don't know if we have any of those cutesy love story things that we could tell to people, you know? Like the first time we kissed, it was literally minutes after I had broken up with Noah." 

"Speaking of Noah... what exactly is going on between you two?" Chelsea asks. 

"Nothing's going on, we're just friends now, that's all." She says simply, shrugging it off. "Why do you think something's going on?"

"I don't know, you guys just seemed pretty buddy-buddy going on a late midnight walk together." Chelsea says out of the side of her mouth. 

"It's-it's not like that, okay? I'm engaged to Lucas. We've both just sort of... waved white flags so to speak and are becoming friends." She says, defending herself. 

"Is Lucas okay with that?" Chelsea asks her. April remembers she didn't tell Chelsea about the fight she and Lucas had. _About Noah._

"Y-yeah, uh, he's okay with it." She stutters on her words, lying to her best friend and feeling awful about it. 

Chelsea raises one eyebrow and puts on her best 'I don't believe you' face. 

"I'm gonna go get dressed, yeah?" She says, trying to get out of telling her about it or lying to her even more. 

"Okay." She hears Chelsea say before she starts moving back to the room, where her clothes are and the bathroom is connected to.

She gets inside the room and shuts the door quietly. She hears Noah's snoring the second she gets into the room, a reminder that the rest of the people here are still asleep.

She grabs both her bag full of clothes and her make-up bag and heads into the bathroom.

She decides to wear a brown dress detailed with little purple flowers, and denim jacket. She applies some natural makeup - she prefers the whole 'natural look' as opposed to going full glam everyday. 

She finishes up her makeup and smiles at her reflection in the mirror. 

"April? You in there?" She hears Noah ask from the other side of the door. She was so caught up in getting changed that she didn't notice that the snoring had stopped. 

"Be out in a sec." She yells back. She quickly packs up all of her stuff and opens the door. 

He's there, sitting on the edge of his bed, on his phone. 

"It's all yours." She says to him as she starts moving towards her twin bed and places her things down on the ground. 

"Thanks." He says, looking back at her as he makes his way to the door. 

"You look nice today." He says, making April's heart skip a beat. "Not that you don't look nice everyday, it's just, uh..." He says, getting stuck in his words. 

"I know what you meant, Noah. What, have you turned into Rahim now?" She says, teasing him. 

He chuckles at that as he stands near the door. He just looks at her for a moment, grinning. 

"What are you doing? Go use the bathroom!" She says, grinning back at him. 

He puts his hands up and says a quick 'okay, okay' as he goes into the bathroom. 

April laughs a little and flops down on the bed, phone in hand. She gets a notification from photos and looks at it. One year ago today, it says, showing pictures of her and Lucas a year ago today. He was kissing her on her cheek while they were standing in a pumpkin patch.

It was a few months after Love Island had ended, and things were going perfectly for them. They were spending the weekend together that day and Lucas had convinced to her to go to a pumpkin patch with him, even though it was a tad cold and she didn't want to go out. She misses those times. When things were good and she wasn't thinking about what she could've done differently. 

She wonders when all that thinking started. They were sky high when they got out the villa, and then somehow, they got here. Where April is constantly thinking about the what if and Lucas is wondering if she's going to cheat on him. God, even the thought of cheating made her sick to her stomach. She wonders how they got here.

She thinks it all started when the moved in together. They didn't end up moving in together until 5 months after the show had ended. Before then, they were seeing each other every weekend because she lived in London and his life was in Oxford. And when they moved in, she thought she would start to see him more and she would become a permanent fixture in his life. But she would basically only see him for a second in the morning and an hour or two at night. And by the time he got home, he was exhausted by work and all the driving he had to do. 

She didn't want to talk to him about it because he had changed his whole routine to be with her. She wasn't happy, but what could she do about it? She couldn't ask him to give up his job that he loved so much. So she just decided to shut up about it and kept it in her head. That's when all the thoughts started to come up. The what ifs that April loved to do so much. What if she had stayed with Noah? What if she made different choices in the villa? What if- 

"April? You okay?" Noah says to her, his voice coming from beside her, interrupting her thoughts. She must've been too in her thoughts to notice he was there. "You totally zoned out there." 

"Yeah, yeah, fine. Totally fine." She says, putting on her fake smile. 

Noah still has a concerned look on his face but he doesn't say anything about her fake smile and her 'fine'. 

They hear a knock at the door and April tells them they can come in. 

"Hello!" Chelsea says, appearing with Henrik in the doorframe. "So we're going around waking up everyone up and telling them the plan for today. You wanna tell em' this time, babe?" She says to Henrik, places a hand on his cheek. 

"No, you can tell em' this time, babe." He says, making Chelsea laugh like a thirteen-year-old girl for some reason. 

April's eye move to Noah's and she raises her eyebrows, making him chuckle a little. 

"Alright, so the plan," Chelsea says, getting back to the topic at hand. "So we girls are going to have a girl's lunch at 11 and the boys are gonna stay here and do... whatever Henrik has planned for the guys. Then, we're all gonna met up again and we're gonna go to a farmers market!" Chelsea says excitedly. 

"Got it, you two? Cause we have other people to get to." Henrik asks them. 

"Yep, we got it." April answers for the both of them. 

They say a quick kay and make their way out, looking at each other adoringly as they do so. 

"They seem more starry-eyed than last week. Wonder how that happened." Noah says after they've left the room.

"Well, he told her he loved her last night. So, yeah," She laughs a little at his shocked face. "they are a little more lovey dovey today."

"What? I thought they've only been dating for like, 2 months." Noah says, surprised.

"6 months. Boy, you are out of the loop there, my friend." April says, sitting crossed-legged on the bed. 

"I guess I am out of the loop. I've kind of been out of the loop for a while now, haven't I?" He asks. 

"I mean, yeah. But not everyone kept in touch. You and Hope were always in your own little bubble though anyway, so no one expected you guys to." She says, remembering back to the villa when they were practically attached at the hip.

"Yeah, we _were._ " He says, using the past tense. April looks up at him and he sighs. 

"Are you guys okay? Are you okay?" She asks, worried about him. 

"We're not great. But I'm okay, I promise." He says, giving her a smile and melting her worries away. 

"You should probably get changed." She says, looking at him still in pajamas. "You, Henrik and Gary have plans in like... an hour. Or more specifically you have a three-way man date." 

"It is not a three-way man date! Where'd you even come up with that term anyway?" He says as he grins at her. 

"Lucas and my step-brothers go to football games together sometimes and I call them three-way man dates. They hate me for it." She answers, chuckling a little. 

"They should, that is awful." He says, laughing. "God, what do you think we'll do? I haven't talked to Henrik or Gary in forever." 

"Oh, you'll probably smoke cigars out on the porch or something. I've heard that's what Henrik does when he gets bored." She says. Noah raises an eyebrow at her, confused. "I'm kidding. I have no clue what you'll do. And I know them better than you so that's really saying something." 

"What about you? You excited for your girls lunch thing?" He asks her. 

"A little bit, yeah. I mean, Chelsea's all giggly today so that should be fun." She says, nodding. She looks up at Noah and wonders why he's still here, sitting talking to her when he could be doing better things. "Why are you still talking to me? Shouldn't you be getting changed or going to talk to the guys?" 

"I like talking to you, April. In fact, I always have. I don't know why you seem to think I don't." 

"I don't know, I just think that there are better things you could be doing than just talking to plain ol' me. You could look at the sky, you could read one of those book that you're so fond of, you could take up yoga - there's an infinite number of things that would probably be way more fun than talking to me." 

"More fun than talking to you?" Noah repeats in question form and April nods quickly. "There's no such thing. I don't think there's anything that's better than talking to you." He says, smiling down at her. 

April smiles back up at him and her heart feels happy again. "Maybe you're just too nice to me, is that the deal?" 

"Yeah, sure, that might be my deal. I like being too nice to you anyway." 

April's still smiling widely when Chelsea comes bursting into the room.

"Come on, babes! You gotta help me get ready and we're going in like, 17 minutes!" She says, peeking in through the door. 

"I'm coming, I'm coming!" She says, picking up her phone and moving towards the door. "That's what she said." She says, chuckling to herself as she opens the door. 

She can see Noah grinning at her as she waves a little 'bye' wave to him. 

Time moves quickly after she leaves that room. She helps Chelsea pick out an outfit for the day, then all the girls huddle in one car and they make their way to the restrauant. 

The lunch goes by quickly as well. The girls' stories all jumble together in April's mind. 

Lottie tells the group about her life in America for the past two months or so. Hannah discusses her novel and what it's like being a writer. Priya rambles on about her fashion blog and how well it's doing. 

April just sits there, listening to the jumble of stories and ramblings on, with nothing to say. She suddenly hears her phone ringing in her purse and she excuses herself from the table. 

"Hello?" She says, bringing the phone up to her ear. 

"Uh, hi. It's me." Lucas says on the other side of the call. "I didn't know if you'd pick up." 

"Yeah, I'm sorry I haven't been picking up. Just been a bit busy here, that's all. We're a bit busy right now, actually, can I call you back?" She asks, looking back at the table where Chelsea is laughing hyserically at something as the waitress brings them their check. 

"Sure, but when are you going to be back? I really miss you, you know. I know it hasn't been good between us in the last few weeks, but I want to fix that. And I kind of need you here to do that." 

"I'm coming home tomorrow." She hears him sigh, clearly disappointed she's not coming sooner. "But- uh, I can sneak out early and I can see you then." 

"You'd do that? Wake up early and all?" 

"Of course. The perks of being an early riser." She says, smiling. 

"Okay, well, I'll see you then." He says, his voice sounding happier and she pictures him smiling. 

"April?" Chelsea calls from beside her, "Ready to go?"

April realizes most of the girls are getting up from their seats and are ready to go.

"Gotta go, Lucas. I'll see you soon." She says as quickly gets up from her chair. She then follows them off the patio of the restrauant. 

They huddle themselves in the car once again and make their way to the farmers market. 

April follows Chelsea around for a while, Chelsea showing April all the stuff she liked in the booths. April pays Chelsea her attention for the most part, only once looking around the market, searching for Noah. 

She wants to talk to him again but she doesn't find his face in the crowd of people swarming the booths. 

Maybe it's for the best, she thinks. Maybe she should just stay away from him for the rest of the trip. He was the one Lucas was mad about and no matter how happy she was when she was with Noah, her relationship was important and she needs things to work out. 

So she just sighs and turns back to Chelsea who is talking about buying a grappling hook for Henrik. Chelsea goes on and on, talking without pausing for a breath, until they get in the car to go. 

April stays away from Noah for the rest of the day for the most part. The night comes fast, though, and she's faced with a one-on-one situation with him again as she walks to their shared room. 

They both change and April goes on her phone to avoid conversation. She sees out of the corner of her eye Noah looking at her expectantly. 

"I'm leaving tomorrow, I'm gonna sneak out early so Lucas and I can talk. Just so you know if you look over to my bed and see I'm gone, I wasn't kidnapped or anything." She decides to tell him, avoiding his eye. 

"Okay. I won't think you were kidnapped or anything." He says, chuckling a little, trying to lighten the mood.

April doesn't say anything back, looking at the ground, away from him. 

"April, did I do something?" He asks, his words coming out fast and his voice sounds concerned. 

"No, you didn't do anything, Noah." She mets his eyes and sighs. "I just think it might be for the best if we... you know, stayed away from each other." 

"If that's what you think is best... then I guess I have to accept that." He says, scraching the side of his head. They sit in silence for a while until April asks:

"Well, what do you think is best?" 

"I don't know. I just know that I like being around you and I don't really want to stop doing just that." He says, making April smile a little.

"Then what should we do?" She asks. 

"We aren't doing anything wrong by being just friends, right? I mean, that is all we are." He says, like he's trying to convince himself of that fact. 

"Right." April says, agreeing with him. 

"Then let's just keep being friends." He says as he shrugs. "It's as simple as that." 

"As simple as that. Yeah... that sounds good." April says, trying not to overthink things. She's sure that it's not as simple as that, but she doesn't want to think of the reasons why. Not right now.

"So... how was your girls thing?" He asks her, trying to talk like friends again. 

"It was okay. Lottie spilled the deats about who her secret client was so that was quite fun." 

"Who was it?" Noah asks, curious. 

"I can't tell you that, can I? Due to confidentiality, I am not at liberty to tell you." She says, smirking playfully at him. 

Noah scoffs. "Why'd you tell me she told you if you're not gonna tell me?" 

"I mentioned it in passing, you're the one who asked." She says, still smirking. 

"You cruel, cruel woman." He says, shaking his head at her. 

April chuckles a little as she pushes a hair on her face back in to place. 

They sit there, never minding the late time, laughing and talking the night away. April hasn't felt this good in a while, hasn't smiled this much in ages, she thinks.

And when he looks at her, it feels as though they were back in the villa and nothing had changed. He looks at her in the same way he used to, April notices. She remembered because everytime he looked at her like that she felt like she was actually someone special. He looked at her like she was the only thing in the world that mattered and that made her heart warm. 

She felt special for the first time in a while that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There it is! I'm gonna have some time off next week, so maybe another chapter will be coming sooner than later, but maybe not! Who know really lol.  
> 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> beta reader - margotmuses  
> Hi! Sorry this chapter out kind of late, that probably isn't really a surprise since literally all my chapters are out kind of late. Anyways I'll keep this kind of short and just let you read the chapter. Oh wait, I was gonna mention here the Friends reference in this chapter is from season 4, the one with the fake party, and yes I had to look that episode title up. Sorry if you don't recognize it, I just watch TV quite a bit and I like to include references here and there.

Noah sighs as he turns the key into the lock on his apartment. He quickly heads to his room and flops down onto his bed. He opens his phone and smiles when he sees a text from April. 

April: you coming to the party today?

They had been texting throughout the week, just every now and then, but every time they did Noah smiled more than ever. At first, it was just little texts like April reminding him about the party today last week and then it slowly turned into them talking about their days with each other. 

Today it was a text about the Halloween party Chelsea was throwing. He wants to go, but it's a costume party and of course he doesn't have a costume. His roommate had a pair of bunny ears from Easter that he gave him - but that's basically all Noah had. 

Regardless, he _does_ want to go so he quickly texts back saying he's coming to it. She sends him back a ':)' and he smiles at that. He grabs the bunny ears - just in case Chelsea kicks him out because he doesn't have a costume - and is on his way out the door.

He makes his way to the address that April sent him, which was assumingly Chelsea's apartment. He gets up to the door that's covered in Halloween decorations and knocks. The door opens almost immediately to reveal Chelsea who is dressed up as Cher from Clueless. 

"Hey, Noah!" Chelsea shouts at him over the loud music playing inside there. "What are you dressed as?" She asks, looking up and down at him.

"Nothing. I thought the costume thing was optional." He responds. 

"Ugh, as if!" She says in a distinct Cher voice. "Noah, I clearly put in there that costumes were mandatory! That means costumes are required for entry." 

"Well, I thought you might say something like that so I brought a back-up plan." He says putting on the ears. 

She chuckles a little looking at him. "What is that supposed to be?" 

He takes off the watch he had on his wrist and holds it up to her. "White Rabbit. Alice In Wonderland. Time's running out." 

"Ugh, fine! But next time, you need a real costume!" Chelsea gives in and opens the door to him. 

He quickly scans the room and sees April sitting on a futon in the corner. 

She looks a bit bored sitting there. Her eyes light up when she sees him and she comes running over before Noah can take a step over to where she was. 

"Thank god you're here, I was so bored. Chelsea invited some of her clients to this one and I know, like, none of them." She says. She looks up and down at him, like Chelsea did before, looking at his costume. "What the hell are you dressed as?" She says, giggling a little bit. 

Noah scoffs and holds up the watch again. "White Rabbit, Alice In Wonderland. Why isn't anyone getting it?" 

"Maybe cause it's not a costume, it's just bunny ears and your watch." She says, snatching the ears off his head. "Where'd you get these? Drug store on the way here?" 

"No, my roommate gave me them, it was all we had in the apartment that minorly resembled a costume. It gave me entry into this party so you should be grateful for them." He says, as he snatches them back from April and puts them onto his head. 

"Oh, well, that changes everything. I am eternally grateful to these two little bunny ears for letting you in here and therefore gracing us with your presence here at this party tonight." She says sarcastically and Noah punches her in the shoulder playfully. 

"What are you dressed as?" He says, looking up and down at her. She was wearing a maroon cheerleading uniform with long sleeves. 

"I'm a cheerleader. Isn't it obvious?" 

"Oh, well, you don't have the pom-poms so no, it really isn't." He says, teasing her.

Her eyes light up again and she quickly moves back to where she was before, picking up two pom-poms. 

"How's this then? Am I a cheerleader now?" She says holding them up in a Y position. 

"Yeah, sure. Where'd you get that costume?" He asks. He didn't think of April to be the type of person who just had a cheerleading costume lying around. 

"Chelsea had it in her closet, she wore it a couple years ago for Halloween and it fit me." She says, and Noah notices it looks like a Chelsea outfit. "I thought it looked like the one Rachel wore on Friends so that's why I wore it." She says, laughing a little as she looks at the pom-poms. 

"Yeah, it kind of does." He says, looking her up and down again. He doesn't know if it looked like the one Jennifer Aniston wore in Friends - he hadn't watched the 90s' sitcom in years - but he knew April looked perfect, like she always does. 

"Should I do a cheer and hit my mouth on something like she did in the show?" She says and Noah smiles at her. 

He didn't know what she was really taking about, he never did get her references, but she was always so happy and smile-y when she was referencing TV shows or citing song lyrics so he always went along with it. 

"Probably not the hit your mouth on something part. That'd be bad, we'd have to fix you." He says, as they move over to the futon to sit down. 

"Well, you could my Ross if you wanted. Ooh, that would be fun! Chelsea could be Phoebe, and Marisol could be Monica." She says excitedly. 

"Marisol isn't even here, April." Noah says, chuckling at her little 'Friends' portrait of all of them. 

"Ooh, and Bobby could be Chandler! We could get the whole gang back together for it!" She says, still excited as ever. 

"Wouldn't he have to dress up in all those pants and shirts then? 'Could I be wearing any more clothes?' God, he would love doing that bit." Noah says, scrounging up the one part of the show he remembered, making April giggle. 

"That was Joey that did that, actually, he was just pretending to be Chandler. But yeah, he would love that bit." 

"Oh, well, you would know since you are the know-it-all." He says, teasing her once again.

"Are we back on this? I am not a know-it-all! I just know more than you on TV shows and I have to correct you on that." She says, defending herself again. 

"Sure, sure. Know-it-all." He says under his breath, grinning as he does. 

She rolls her eyes at him but has a smile on her face. 

"Who would play Joey then, in your little 'Friends' play with all of us in it?" He asks her, moving back to her topic. 

"I don't know. Maybe Bobby could play both Joey and Chandler. He'd be darting back and forth like a mad man but I'm sure it'd be a right laugh, you know?" 

"Yeah, it would. But I'm not sure how Bobby would go about playing a ladies' man. He's not really that type of guy." Noah says. 

"Who in our group is really that type of guy?" April asks him. 

"Uh, you're gonna hate me for saying this but... I thought of Lucas." He says. He remembered looking at him when he first came in, with all the girls crowding around him and he thought the guy was in his element. 

April's smile fades and he can feel her pull a bit away from him and their conversation. 

"Hey, I didn't mean that he's not gonna be committed to you or anything. If anyone can make that ladies' man settle down, it's you." He says, trying to make her smile again. 

"Thanks." She says quietly as she looks down at her pom-poms. 

"Where is Lucas anyway? Weren't you trying to get him to come with you on this one?" He says, remembering one of their text conversations where he asked her if Lucas was coming to the party. 

"Yeah, I was. He had to work late again and he didn't want to come to a party." April says, sighing quietly after the words came out. 

"Oh, I'm sorry about that." He says, looking down at her. 

She doesn't met his eyes, instead looking down at the pom-poms again, clearly upset. 

"You don't have to be, it's not your fault." April says, finally looking up at him and shrugging. 

"I know it isn't. I'm just sorry that you're not happy." Noah says as April stares blankly at the floor. "Do you want me to do a cheer for you, would that make you smile again?" 

The corners of her mouth seem to perk up at that. "That would be funny, but I don't think you would want to do that." 

"Eh, if it made you happy, I would." He says, picking up the pom-poms and holding them up like she did earlier. 

She starts laughing and puts a hand to her mouth. Noah grins at the sight of her laughing and smiling again. Whenever he had moments like this with April, he realized how much he had missed the little things about her, like her smile or her laugh. 

"Oh my god, that is funny. But you don't have to do a cheer for me, Noah, I'm okay." 

"Are you sure?" He asks her, putting them down on the futon again. 

"I'm sure." She says, giving him a reassuring smile. He's unsure of this and still wears a look of worry and concern. "I swear I'm okay. You don't have to worry about me." 

"Alright fine. I just- I want you to be happy and if there's anything I can ever do-" He starts but April interrupts him. 

"I know that, and that's very sweet of you to say but I'm good. I really am. I swear, these last few weeks I've been a lot better. Happier, maybe. I don't know how to describe it, but I've been feeling a lot better recently." She pauses, smiling at him. "I really like being friends with you. I actually think that might be one of the reasons why... it's been so good recently." She confesses. 

Noah smiles down at her. "I like being friends with you too." He says simply. 

They sit in silence for a while, and Noah starts thinking about that word. Friends. Is that all this is to him? He thought that's all it was, but there always was Hope's voice in the back of his mind. 

_"Just because you say you don't have feelings for her, doesn't mean I don't think that you do."_

__

__

_"...but it's really hard when you look at her like that."_

He still hears her words ringing in his ears, haunting him and wracking his brain with questions that he still didn't know the answers to. 

"Noah?" April says, snapping him out of his thoughts and back into reality.

"What's going on?" He asks her. 

"Nothing, you just seemed to zone out there for a minute. Something on your mind?" 

He closes his eyes for a second, searching for something to say. "Uh, it's nothing. Absolutely nothing."

"Ah, the nothing excuse, very familiar with that one. I use it, quite a lot." She says, holding up a finger. 

Noah opens his mouth to say something back but she stops him. "Look, I won't pry but if you ever need to talk about whatever it is, I'm here, okay?" 

"Okay." He says as he smiles at her. 

He remembered that about her, how caring she was and how she was always there if someone she cared about needed to talk. 

He remembered back in the villa she was always supportive of everyone. She even tried to be supportive of him and his relationship with Hope. If that's what he wanted, he remembered her saying once. 

_If that's what you want..._

"Okay, you're zoning out again, let's talk about something." April says, as she readjusts her position on the futon and sits cross-legged. "Are you a Cat or Dog person?" 

He laughs at the question. "Are you sure the discussion you want to have is about if I'm a Cat or Dog person?" 

"It's a question that you can answer. It's to get you out of your head and whatever you're thinking about." She explains and he gives her a questioning glance. "I'm just trying to help. If you want to keep zoning out and stuff, then by all means..." She trails off, staring down and not looking at him. 

Noah sighs quietly and then smiles a little. "I'm a cat person." He says, answering her question. "What are you?'

She looks up at him and her smile is wide again. "I'm kind of both, I love both dogs and cats. Is that cheating?" 

"Yes, absolutely that is cheating." He says and she laughs. "It's an 'or' question, as in, one or the other. You can't pick both!" 

She keeps laughing and they go back and forth asking each other questions. Sure, it was a bit silly and the questions they were asking were very basic, but Noah was having more fun than he had in ages. All his worries and concerns just seemed to disappear when he was talking to her. 

He thought back to a few months ago, when he and Hope were constantly fighting and he never had anything to look forward to. He and Hope were still fighting now, or were still in a fight, but Noah felt a lot better than he had back then. It's that thing that April was talking about earlier, he thinks, about being happier.

He was happier when she was in his life. 

The minutes pass like seconds, like they always did when he was with April. The party still raged on in the background, but it was like they were in their own bubble at that time. 

But, this is Noah and April, so of course it was only a matter of time before that bubble was busted. 

"Ooh, look who's here!" Chelsea shouts from the door, grabbing April's attention and subsequently Noah's as well. 

Lucas appears coming through the door and April quickly gets up from her seat and runs to him. Noah watches them from the corner of the room on the futon, not moving from his seat. 

He watches as April hugs Lucas and beams at him as he whispers something in her ear. 

He must've come here to surprise her, Noah assumes. 

Noah feels that same feeling he did at the engagement party, that twinge of jealousy as he watches him put his hands on her waist and kisses her. 

That same jealousy he felt watching her and Lucas couple up for the first time. That same jealousy he felt watching them dance together at the prom. That same jealousy he felt as he watched them walk out of the villa, hand in hand. 

He wished he was that guy. He wishes he was that guy right now. 

And that made him realize something. 

Made him realize that Hope was right. She was right about everything she said that night of the engagement party. He couldn't just keep denying it, she was right...

He does still have feelings for April.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There it is! I was gonna mention something here that was meant to clear up confusion but it's a super little thing and I don't really know if anyone will notice it and be confused about it. I just found a little plot hole last week, fault of my own dumb self, and now I just want to be kind of consistent and clear so it's a good story and no one gets confused. Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope you liked it.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! So I haven't posed in several weeks and I'm sorry for that, school has been crazy lately and writing was kind of put on the back burner for a while. But don't worry, I'm going to finish this story cause it literally lives rent free in my mind and I have to get it out. Anyway, hope you like this chapter and thanks for reading!  
> Beta Reader - margotmuses

April wakes up surprisingly late today. 

It's the first Monday of November and she was actually feeling pretty good.

Her relationship was pretty stable nowadays, Lucas was making an effort to show up more and try to not get as angry and jealous, and April was trying to communicate with him on her feelings. 

Key word: try. 

That was something she wasn't very good at. She didn't want to worry the people she loved with all her crappy feelings and her overthinking. She thought it was better to just... keep it all to herself and tell people she was okay even if she wasn't. 

But she didn't have to do that right now. She was doing well, and she didn't have to lie about her well-being to everyone, she didn't have to say she was 'fine'.

Everything's on the up and up.

_Well, everything except one thing_ , she thinks as she opens up her lock screen to her and Noah's text messages from last night. Lately, he seemed a bit... distant, leaving without saying goodbye on Halloween and he'd only sent a few messages last night when she'd asked him how he'd been lately. 

But this was Noah, he wasn't the most talkative guy and they hadn't talked in person since the party, so she decided to not read much into it. At least not yet. 

Lucas had already left for work, so she gets up to make breakfast for only herself. 

After she had placed her dish in the sink, her eye catches her notepad sitting on the counter. She grabs it and moves it towards her. 

Chelsea had given her homework after their last wedding planning session, the first wedding planning session they'd ever had. 

April didn't really want to go over all that stuff, she didn't care which flowers they picked or which color the table covers should be, but Chelsea said it had to be done and she was right.

She's leaving in January for tour and would be gone for close to 2 months, so they have to do all the wedding planning before then or there isn't going to be a wedding. They wanted to do it April or May, so it was now or never to plan it. 

And the list she's holding is a list of all the people she wanted to invite to the wedding and their addresses. 

Noah's name on the list was crossed out, then rewritten and then crossed out once again. She didn't know if she should invite him to the wedding or not. 

Would he even want to come? You don't invite your exes to your wedding, that's not a thing you do unless you're bitter and want them to see how much better your life was than theirs. And April wasn't bitter and her life wasn't any better than his, in fact, it was probably worse. 

But on the other hand, he is her friend. And friends are happy for one another and support each other. So, in that respect, maybe he should be invited.

She sighs as the question wracks her brain with things she doesn't want to think about or rather, overthink about in this case. She opens up her phone again to her text messages. 

April: hey can i call you or do you want to have the 'do you want to come to my wedding' conversation over text?

She sends the message to Noah and stares down at her phone, awaiting a response.

She sees he read it almost right away and see the little '...' bubble come up moments afterwards. 

Noah: do i want to have the 'do i want to come to your wedding' conversation over text, what kind of question is that?

April chuckles, noticing she put it was a little weird. 

April: a question. weird one but still a question. can you just call me please?

She smiles as she see his caller ID pop up in her screen a moment later. 

"Hi." She breathes out, after she had picked up the phone and placed it to her ear. 

"Hey..." He says, his voice sounding like a mixed bag of emotions. He sounds happy to hear from her, but he seems apprehensive to talk to her for reasons she cannot possibly figure out. "So you want to talk about if I want to come to your wedding or not?" 

"Um, yeah. Chelsea showed me some sample invitations and a bunch of wedding crap the other day, and she has given me the homework of making a list of who I want at the wedding. And your name has been crossed out and rewritten a bunch of times and I really don't know how this works." She says, rambling a little, nervous to hear what he'll say on the matter. 

"How what works?" He asks. 

"How the whole sort of exes being friends thing works. Should invite you to my wedding? Cause it might be a bit weird and I don't want to make it weird for you, so if it's weird-" She gets cut off by Noah interrupting her. 

"You're using the word weird quite a lot." 

"Yeah, yeah, I am." She says, breathing out, trying to calm her nerves. 

"Um, look, if you want me to come, I'm there. It might be a little weird, but I'm there if you want me to be."

"Okay. Well, that's not really an answer, is it?" She responds, becoming a little frustrated with him. "Do you want to come or not?"

"April, it's up to you if you want to invite me or not." He says, still deflecting and not answering the question. 

April sighs, sometimes his inability to let her know how he was feeling or what he was thinking annoyed her. 

She knew that he wasn't trying to cause her trouble by leaving the decision up to her, but it's hard to gauge how you feel about something when the other person is giving you nothing on how they feel. 

She also knew that Noah never wanted to hurt anyone so with leaving the decision up to her, he wouldn't be the reason why Lucas was mad at her or why she was hurt.

He didn't want to hurt her and he just wanted her to be happy. And he should be at her wedding because of that.

"Alright, what's your address?" She finally says.

She smiles as she rewrites his name and address on the list next to Lottie and Chelsea's names. 

"So how have you been?" She asks after she's put the list down on the counter.

"In the last 72 hours in which you haven't seen me?"

She laughs a little, remembering it hadn't been that long since they'd last seen each other. It felt like a long time, since when they were at the villa, they saw each other for almost every single minute of every day. She missed that a little now. 

"Yeah, um, in the last 72 hours." She replies.

"I've been fine. It's Monday so not all that great, you know. But all in all, I think I've been pretty... fine." He says awkwardly, sounding like he's leaving something out.

"Fine isn't always good, you know that. What's going on?" She asks, wondering what's making him act weird.

"Uh, Hope and I broke up yesterday." He says. April's jaw drops in absolute shock. 

She couldn't believe the words that she just heard. Not because Noah and Hope were meant to be or something, she didn't think they were, but they always went back to each other after all the fighting and after April had kissed him, they went back to each other. They weren't like puzzle pieces that just fit when you saw them together, they were like two magnets that always came together no matter how hard you tried to pull them apart. And now what, they just suddenly broke up? 

"What? What happened, are you okay? Oh my god, here am I talking about wedding invitations and addresses, why didn't you make me shut up?" She says, totally dumbfounded. 

He laughs a little at her shock. "I didn't want you to shut up, it was a nice distraction from it all. And yeah, I'm fine, it's been coming on for a while."

"Why did you guys break up? What happened? You guys have been dating for a year!"

"Yeah, and we were unhappy for a really long time. I went over there yesterday and we had the fight and we decided to break up, that's the whole story." 

"What was the reason for breaking up? I mean, I knew you guys were fighting, but I really didn't think you guys were going to break up." She says, still surprised by this recent turn of events. 

"There were a lot of reasons to break up. We just don't work together anymore, maybe we never did, and we didn't want to keep pretending that we did." 

"Well, what started the big fight? What made you guys realize you didn't want to be in the relationship anymore?" She asks, curious on how it all happened.

Quite a few people in the villa didn't like Noah and Hope together and tried to pull them out of their toxic relationship and nothing worked, or at least lasted. They just kept going back to each other and making up. What changed? 

Noah sighs, clearly thinking of the reason, but doesn't say anything for a minute. Why doesn't he want to tell her the real reason they broke up? 

"April, we just broke up and that's it. Can we move on to a different topic please?" He says, sounding frustrated. 

"Fine, are you alright? Do you need anything from me? Breakups are hard, do you want to like, wallow, or something?" 

"Wallow?" He asks, confused. 

"Wallow in self-pity - like girls drown themselves in ice cream after a breakup and I'm not exactly sure what guys do, but you can wallow if you want." She explains. 

"No, I don't want to wallow and I don't need anything. I appreciate the thought, but like I said, I'm perfectly fine." He reassures.

"Okay, so, you know like when you do all this nice stuff for me and you try to cheer me up when I'm down?" 

"Yes, yes I do." 

"Well, this is me trying to do that. I'm being a friend, your friend specifically, and I want to help you out. I know you're perfectly fine and everything's just fine, but there must be something I could do." 

"Alright, fine, there is something you can do." He says, giving in. 

"Yes! I was right, what can I do for you?" She says, smiling widely. 

He chuckles a little on the other side of the call. "You sound like a customer service rep on the phone."

"Oh my god, I do." She says, giggling at that. "Okay, what can I do for you, sir?" She says, in her best customer service voice as she grabs the notepad and flips the page over, ready to write stuff down if she needed to. 

"You can drop off some of Hope's things for me but you don't have to do it if you don't want to, April, I can just do it." 

"I want to do it, how is it going to work?" She asks. He explains how he can drop off the stuff after work today and how she can give it to Hope sometime, whenever she had the time. 

"And once again, you don't have to do this. I didn't even ask you to. I know you and Hope haven't always seen eye-to-eye so you don't have to do this." 

"I know that, but I want to, okay? You do too many sweet and nice things for me, I have to do at least one nice thing for you." She says, thinking of all the things he's done in the last few months just to make her happy. How could she not just do this one simple thing for him? 

"You're not gonna let me convince you out of this one, are you?" He says, sighing. 

"I'm afraid not. Are you sure you're okay? Cause I can get you anything, seriously, whatever you need I'm here." 

"Yeah, I'm fine. Thank you, April." 

"Yeah, of course. Okay you'll drop the stuff off today and I'll go bring it over there." She says, looking down at her notepad with scribbles of Hope's address and apartment number. 

"Right... and we don't have any Chelsea things going on in the next few weeks?" 

"We don't have a ton of them, only one, she's planning a secret santa so it's like the part where you draw a name out of a hat. It's on the invitation if you need to see it. Why, you trying to avoid me?" She jokes, a playful smile on her face, but of course he can't see that. 

"No, no nothing like that. Not trying to avoid you at all, whatsoever. That's just so far away from where I'm at." He says, stuttering over his words awkwardly, which was something he never did. April furrows her eyebrows in confusion. He'd been acting weird this whole call, what was going on? 

"Calm down, okay? I was just joking. Are you actually trying to avoid me? I thought we were past that." She says, wondering if this is the reason he was being so weird.

If he was trying to avoid her, his behavior over the past few days would make total sense. But why would he want to avoid her? All the thoughts run through her brain as she waits to hear his answer to the question but it never comes.

"I have to go, actually, or I'll be late for work. It was good talking to you and uh, I'll drop the stuff off at lunch." He says hurriedly and there's some background noise on the other side of the call. "I guess I'll talk to you later?" 

"Sure, yeah I guess." She says, confused on why he's pushing her off the phone. 

He says goodbye quickly and hangs up the phone before April can say anything else. 

She laughs out of absolute confusion as she stares down at her black phone screen. What is making him act so goddamn weird? 

Whatever it is, April doesn't figure it out and Noah sure doesn't tell her. She's working when he drops Hope's stuff off, so if she had the chance to talk to him there she missed it. Not that she was thinking he'd act any less bizarre if she had, but she still missed the chance. 

She comes home a bit early, in order to go drop Hope's stuff off at the address Noah had given her. It doesn't take her long for her to get there, since Hope's apartment wasn't far from April's place. 

She does exactly what Noah told her to do, just leave the stuff on her doorstep. She feels like a UPS delivery woman only without the brown uniform as she does so.

She's already walking away when she hears the door creak open and a voice call out to her. 

"April?" April turns to see Hope at the doorway, looking at her. She resists the urge to groan at being caught and walks back near Hope and the doorway. 

"Hi! I just came to drop off this box of your stuff, it was at Noah's apartment. I don't know if he told you I was the one coming, I'm sorry if he didn't, I-" She starts nervously rambling again when Hope interrupts her. 

"The lad can't even face me after the break up?" She asks, a bitter smile on her face. 

"No, no it's not like that. I offered to do this. I just wanted to do something nice for him since... he does so many nice things for me. I don't really need to get into it, I'll just go, sorry if I interrupted something important." 

"No, it's okay, you didn't interrupt anything. If you don't mind me asking, what exactly is going on between you two?" She says, leaning against her doorway frame, but still up in her queen-like posture. 

"Nothing is going on, we're just friends now. God, why does every single person in this world think something else is going on?" She says, remembering Chelsea had said the same thing, growing increasingly frustrated with that question. 

Not because it was a bad question to ask, it wasn't, she just had to answer with the same answer every time and she wasn't even sure if the answer was right.

There was some part of her that thought that answer was wrong, that it wasn't nothing, that she had feelings for Noah, but she shoved that part down immediately every time it came up. She can't have those feelings, she's engaged.

Her answer had to be right... right? 

April shakes her head, trying to clear her mind, and returns to reality. 

"Sorry, I don't know what to tell you. I just- I was the girlfriend, and to me, it looked like more than that. I thought it looked like more than that back then and I was right about that." Hope says, trying to answer the question she had asked her. 

"Back then?" April asks, getting lost. 

"Back at the villa, I kind of suspected something was going on between you two."

"Well, I did pick him on day one." 

"Yeah but after that. Before you kissed him even, you guys were kind of... friends or something. I suspected there were feelings there, but I thought they would just go away if I stuck by him or occupied his time enough, if I got him to avoid you... but I couldn't and I was wrong." She pauses, taking a breath in. "Well, not about the feelings part. That's the part I've always been right about." 

"Well, you aren't right about it now." April replies. "Maybe you were right back then, but now everything is different." 

"Maybe I am wrong now, you're right, I could be wrong. But I remember the villa and I remember how he looked at you. He never looked at me like that, I swear to god. I almost think that we should've just called it quits after casa, maybe that would've been for the best. For all of us." She straightens up, picks up the box and holds the door from the inside. "Bye, April. Hope you have a good life."

Only one thought is on her mind as the door closes in front of her face and as she walks down to her car to go home. 

She has to watch her season of Love Island.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there's the chapter! Again, sorry if anyone was waiting, I don't really think anybody would but if you were, sorry! I won't promise a certain day for a new chapter but I am going to continue this story like I said and I have some villa flashback type things coming up so get excited!


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! It's been a tiny while, but you're getting two chapters today and one is especially long so just deal with it lol. There isn't a ton happening in this one and it's just a bunch of unhappy Noah but honestly I kind of like it and I hope you guys do too.  
> Beta reader - margotmuses

Noah had a few crappy days in a row. 

After the Halloween party, he went home feeling hopeless. He has feelings for April and she's engaged. He _is_ hopeless. 

So he came up with the idea that he would try and avoid her. He knew that earlier he had convinced her not to avoid him and he knew she was probably expecting the same thing from him, but he didn't know what else to do. Every time he looked at her and Lucas at that Halloween party, he felt that stupid jealousy again and he wanted to drink. He wanted to drink, to wash away that feeling. Wash away the jealousy and everything he felt for her. 

But he didn't. He knew it wouldn't, it couldn't, wash away his feelings for her. 

Maybe avoiding her could do that. If he could avoid her for a while, if he could just focus on work... maybe his feelings would just fade away.

Then, the next day, Hope called and asked him to dinner, sounding all happy and perky, saying she was ready to fix their relationship. And he knew, he knew he had to end it. Even though his feelings for April weren't going to go anywhere, it wasn't fair to Hope to continue a relationship with her when he has feelings for another woman. 

He also knew it probably wouldn't end well. 

So, he knocked on her door, expecting the worst. 

"Hey! Come on in!" She said when she had opened the door. Noah stopped and looked at her for a moment. She was wearing an apron, something he'd never seen her in and never thought he would see her in, and the air smelled like something was burning. 

"Are you... cooking?" He asks, trying to take a peek inside. 

"Yes, I am. But you have to come inside to see it, come on!" She says, moving aside as to let him in. 

"I think I might be better if I stayed out here." Safer, he said in his mind. From the wrath of Hope and whatever poor animal she was burning in her oven. 

"It's not that bad, Noah, come on." 

"Well, I have to talk to you about something and I think it might be better if I stay out here." He says, looking to the side down the hall. Then he has an escape route. 

Hope sighs in frustration. "Noah, come on. I never cook, I'm absolutely shite at it, and I cooked for you. I am trying here, to fix this relationship, and I just need you to come inside. We can talk about whatever it is inside, right?" 

Noah sighs and follows her inside the apartment. Hope goes into the kitchen, putting on an oven mitt, ready to take out whatever the hell is burning in there. 

"Can we sit down? Before we eat or whatever, can we just talk please? I really need to talk to you." 

She sighs as she takes what looks like a lasagna and very burnt bread out of the oven. She pulls off her oven mitt, a bit aggressively he might add, and goes to sit down next to him on the couch.

"What is so urgent, Noah?" 

"Hope... I think we should break up." He says after a minute. She sighs again and rubs her eyes in frustration. 

"Why do you think that? I know we have a lot of problems, but we can fix them, I swear we can. We can go to couples therapy or something, do they do those for famous people? I'm sure they do. Anyway, we'll go to therapy and we'll just fix the problems." He opens his mouth to disagree but she doesn't let him say anything. "Noah, we have made it this far. We just have to put some more work in and we'll be fine." 

"No, I don't want to do any of that!" He says loudly, a bit mad she wouldn't let him get a word in. "We have problems that are unfixable. We have to break up." 

"Why?" She shouts back at him.

"Because you were right." 

"I was right? About what? I'm right about everything!" 

Noah opens his mouth, but all that comes out is a sigh of frustration as he has to tell her. Hope sits there for a moment, looking at him, expecting an answer out of him.

"You were right... about April. About the fact that I have feelings for her." He pauses, maybe for her to say something, but she just looks away from him and sighs once again. "I think... I think they never went away. And it's not fair to you and I don't want to keep doing this, Hope. We haven't been good for a long time and I'm tired of keeping up the appearance that we are." 

He looks at her again, expecting a reaction, a rise, expecting her to yell at him but she doesn't. She just looks up at him, her face blank and stern at the same time, and tells him to leave. So, he takes what little he had kept in her apartment and leaves.

"I'm sorry. We just- we want different things, Hope. I don't think we belong together, but I hope you find someone who you do belong with." He said as he was on his way out the door. 

"What about you? Who do you belong with? April?" She asks quietly, looking at him from the kitchen. 

Noah sighs quietly, not knowing how to answer that question. He wished that he did, but he hurt her, he didn't chose her and she found someone else. Someone else she's getting married to. 

"... I don't know." 

And with that, he left her place, leaving behind a broken relationship. 

He should've felt better, leaving that relationship behind him and moving forward, but he just felt empty and full of regret. 

Regret that he didn't end it sooner, any time sooner. When he first started having feelings for April in the villa, after casa amor when he didn't feel fully in the relationship anymore, after they left the villa and went out into the outside world... any time, any place would've been better and easier than right now. 

Maybe if he had broken it off earlier, he would be happier. Maybe he would've even ended up with April. 

He wished there was some sort of alternative reality he could go to, a place where he could do it all again and fix all his mistakes. Where he could travel a different path and could end up way happier and better off than he was right now. 

But there wasn't. 

The day after that wasn't much better. 

April called him that day and just hearing her voice reminded him of everything again, reminded him of the reasons he liked her in first place and reminded of the fact that he was still hopeless.

He had to tell her he and Hope broke up, and afterwards she seemed hell-bent to know the reason why. He couldn't tell her the real reason - so he just told her they had a fight, had a lot of problems and had broken up, which was mostly the truth. 

Except he was the one who was doing the breaking and April was the reason why he was. And he couldn't tell her that. 

The next couple days weren't horribly bad, but avoiding April was proving to be difficult. Not because she was trying to hang out with him all the time or being overbearing, she wasn't that type of person and he could tell she had already picked up on his avoidance of her, but... because he already hating doing it. He wanted to call her, to talk to her, to be happy again... but he couldn't. He couldn't let himself feel all he felt for her when she was busy making wedding invitations and collecting addresses.

God, he had forgotten about the stupid wedding invitations until he checked his post box one day and he saw it. 

Save the Date, April 29th, it said. He checked his calendar 6 times, just hoping every time that there would be something there, something to keep him busy, so he wouldn't have to see her walk down the aisle and watch her get married. But there was nothing else there.

So, instead of dealing with it, he left the wedding invitation sitting there, on his coffee table, while he went out for drinks with one of his coworkers. 

And it stayed there, getting piled on by bills and other mail, and it would stay there until he felt like he wanted to deal with it. 

He figured maybe it would stay there forever. 

So yeah, Noah had a few crappy days in a row. 

In the last few months, he felt his life slowly start to get better, more than just the mediocrity he'd began to expect from life after the villa, but now he was just back to square 1.

How did he even get here? 

It all started with the villa. In truth, he didn't know why he signed up for Love Island in the first place. He wasn't one for reality shows, or shows in general, and he didn't like the fame he had now - so he didn't go there for the spotlight that the show would give him. And he knew that the villa wasn't the type of place for a life-long romance, it was more summer lust instead of summer love. 

But the year he'd had before the villa was filled with loneliness, so much so that he was almost talking to the books. It wasn't that he had no one, he'd still visit his family once a month or so, but... he didn't have a person to share his life with. His last relationship had been over a year ago and he had just stopped trying to met anyone. 

At any other time in his life, he'd have never even considered being a reality show about love. If someone had told him 3 years earlier that he was going to be on Love Island, he wouldn't believe it for a second. But even the introverts of the introverts need someone to talk to, someone to love. 

Maybe that's why he stuck with Hope for so long, he just wanted someone to be there. Even if he and Hope were too different to work out, he still wanted to believe that they could because he desperately wanted that love in his life. 

He believed in an almost idealistic vision of love, the makes-you-sickeningly-sweet kind of love, and he wanted that so bad that he chose to ignore all their fighting and all the ways that they were obviously different, how they wanted different things out of life. 

And he went back to her every single time in the villa, even when there was a shot to possibly have that kind of love with April. 

Then... there was April. 

April might've not seemed like she was the kind of girl he'd fancy. It could seem, with her wit and talkative tendencies, that she was the complete opposite of the type of girl he'd go for. 

But he could talk to her about anything and everything. She could go on and on talking about her music and her life and he'd never get bored, not even for a second. 

For the first time in his life, he'd found himself wanting to talk, wanting to tell all his stories, wanting to say or do anything to make her laugh or smile again. 

That was really all he was looking for when he went on that show. 

And he _really_ should've realized that a long, long time ago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's this chapter! Next one is more important and (probably) way better so hope you guys like that one.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *warning* - mentions of suicide, it's not too detailed or graphic, but there are mentions of it so be aware and maybe skip or don't read the chapter if you have that trigger.  
> Hi! So this is the second chapter you're getting today, it's a lot less filler-y and it's the flashback chapter! I loved writing this, it's a whole mess of a chapter but the flashbacks were so fun to write, well most of the time they were. Anyway, I'll head out and let you read it!  
> Oh and of course my beta is margotmuses, like omg who would've guessed that?

April sighs as she turns on the television. It was the middle of November already, and wedding planning was in full spring now. 

She checks her phone for the third time today but sees nothing. It's not like she should expect anything, Lucas was off on a work trip and he tended not to call her when he was working like that. And she hadn't talked to Noah since that last call. She still didn't know what was going on with him, or why he wasn't talking to her anymore.

She figured the breakup might be weighting heavily on him, and maybe he needed some space from any reminders of the villa. 

_But it started before the breakup even_ , she thinks. When her and Lucas came up to talk to him at the party, he'd seemed... off, to say the least. His eye was wandering around the room, seeming like he didn't want to look at her or them at all, and then he just left out of nowhere. 

And now when she tried to call him last week, he was apparently out having drinks with one of coworkers. 

Something was up, but she couldn't figure out exactly what. She had her assumptions and her suspicions about what might've happened, but she didn't have anything from the source since he wouldn't talk to her. 

She tries to keep her mind off of it, but it just keep popping back up. She shouldn't be this connected to him, the guy didn't have a great track record with her, but she couldn't help it. She didn't have a lot of people in her life that stuck around, that were forever going to be there and for a while there, it felt like Noah was actually going to be one of those people. 

But maybe she was wrong. 

God, she hated being wrong about things. 

But who knows? He could just be busy, couldn't talk for a while and then next week he could start showing up again. 

She really shouldn't think about him so much.

So instead of overthinking more about it, she grabs her TV remote and clicks on Love Island. 

It was stupid really, that she was watching it after what Hope said. It didn't really matter, it didn't matter how Noah looked at her or how they felt, it shouldn't matter. She's engaged to Lucas. She shouldn't even be watching herself get with another guy, but she just couldn't tear herself away.

She wasn't very far in the series, only half-way through episode 2, but she found herself falling into those moments in the villa and it felt like she'd already spent forever watching it. 

She had remembered all these moments from the villa, but now they seemed even more real than they were in her mind. And she felt herself in those moments again as she watched it all play out...

_April went up on the rooftop that second night, just trying to calm her nerves down. It was only the second day and she'd already had two guys stolen from her. Priya didn't choose to be put in the game late, so she didn't blame her for picking Bobby, and she was sure that Hope didn't mean to hurt her or anything by picking Noah._

__

__

_But she was just two days into this thing and she was already thinking this was a mistake._

_She tries to remember why she came on this stupid show - her band could use the exposure and putting herself out there would be good._

_All her previous relationships, they never turned out well and the guys always left her, presumably for something or more often, someone better._

_Love Island wasn't where you found your soulmate or anything - but she wouldn't be alone, she could have someone, for at least a little while._

_It was good that she was here, she told herself._

_She suddenly hears footsteps behind her and turns around to see Noah standing there, at the top of the steps._

_"Hi... I didn't know someone was up here." He says scratching the back of his neck. "I can go if you want."_

_"No, um, it's okay. You can stay." She says, her fingers clutching one of her hairbands on her wrist, something she always did when she was nervous and/or anxious._

_He moves to close to the edge of the rooftop, next to her. They both just stand there for a moment, unsure of what to say or what movement to make._

_"Are you alright?" Noah asks after the moment had passed._

_"Yeah, I'm fine." She says vaguely, her answer sounding too simple. "Well, just contemplating why I'm here but other than that, I'd say I'm pretty alright."_

_"Yeah, this place is pretty full on..." He says, the air still awkward between them._

_There's another moment of silence, both of them just stand there in the awkwardness of it all before April couldn't stand it and finally opened her mouth._

_"Um, look, I'm not going to graft on you or whatever... I get that you're with Hope and I respect that. But I don't want to tiptoe around you and I don't think I'll make it very far here unless I have friends. Now, don't get me wrong, I do have friends here, but it'd just be really nice if we could just... start over maybe? Is that an option? Could we do that?"_

_"Start over? How would we do that?"_

_She motions to the bench and sits down cross-legged on it, facing where he sits down right next to her._

_"Hi, my name is April. I like Chinese food and watch far too many hours of television. Who are you?"_

_Noah laughs and bites his lip, trying to think of something. "Hi, my name is Noah. Uh, I like books and I don't talk very much."_

_"Oh, well, that's perfect, I talk way too much." She says, her face bright with smile._

__

__

She remembered smiling a lot when she was with Noah, and she remembered thinking during that moment that her time in the villa might not be so awful. 

The screen turned to black a while after that, taking April out of that moment and back on her couch. 

She remembered that was the first time they met up on the roof terrace. April had always loved looking at the stars and night in general, and the villa was a different environment for her to say the very least, so she'd tried to calm her anxieties and her worries by going up there and counting the stars. Noah would go up there, to do his verison of what she would, and that's when they'd talk. 

She remembered the third time, and second to last time they met up there much clearer than the rest of them. She quickly goes back to the episode selection and chooses Episode 8, Day 8 in the villa. 

She skims the episode, looking for the one spot she remembered, but she doesn't find it. She thinks back to that moment and remembered it was the only moment where they actually weren't surrounded by cameras...

_"Is this the part where we have one of those heart-to-hearts like on the bachelor or bachelorette?" She asks, on one night where they were both particularly quiet._

__

__

_"Only if you want to." Noah says._

_"Well, we are on a reality show, we probably should."_

_"The cameras didn't follow us up here, you can say anything you want." He says, looking over his shoulder out towards the villa._

_"How's your family? What are they like?" She asks him._

_She watched and smiled as his face lit up, talking about his family and his little brother and his life back home. She could tell it was one of the things he liked to talk about most._

_"What about your family, what are they like?" He asks her back._

_"Well... my mum is great. She's the best, she cooks and everything. If I didn't have her, I would be nothing. I probably wouldn't even be on this show, she's the one who convinced me to go after they reached out to me. And my dad... he's okay. He and my mother got divorced when I was 7, it wasn't very civil. He cheated on her with a pediatric nurse, then he left my mom for her. He's not amazingly supportive of me, but he's there sometimes which I appreciate."_

_"Any siblings?" Noah asks her._

_April opens her mouth but nothing comes out. She sighs again and stares down at a spot to her left._

_"I have two step-brothers, twins, they're my dads wife's sons. We're not very close, but we see each other sometimes." She says finally, then takes another pause, staring down at her wrist. "And... I had a biological brother. His name was Owen."_

_"Was?" Noah asks, looking her in the eye._

_"Was." She repeats, still avoiding his gaze, looking down at the ground this time._

_"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to... but if you do, I'm right here."_

_April looks up at him, her eyes uncertain, but Noah just smiles and shrugs a little. She takes a breath in, preparing herself to tell him about it._

_"My brother died when I was 15... he killed himself. He was 18 years old. He had failed a few of his classes and he had just found out he had to repeat his senior year. He didn't want to do that and he said that he was dropping out. I remember my dad came over to our house that night, not a common occurance for him, and tried to talk some sense into him. I remember hearing their yelling in the kitchen and my brother said he didn't have a future, here or anywhere. Before that night, he barely slept for weeks and was basically speaking in 1 syllable phrases. They all thought it was because his grades were slipping and my parents thought he just needed a tutor, it was the only thing they'd ever agreed on... but now I think he was depressed. 'Cause I think back to those last days I had with him and he really- he was just gone." She pauses, wiping a few tears off her cheeks. "That night before, I think him and my dad fought until like midnight. The next day, I had slept in because it was winter holiday. But then I heard my mom scream and she had found him in the bathroom... and the rest you can probably figure out yourself."_

_Next to her, Noah doesn't say anything. Instead, he just places his hand over hers and intertwines her fingers with his._

_The gesture was simple, common even for friends and family to do in moments of sadness like this, but for them, it was big. It was as close as April thought they would get, since Hope was still very much in the picture. But she was opening up to him, it was like she was showing a window of her life to him, and he didn't run away._

_"And you know how I wake up early?"_

_"Yeah I do." He answers._

_"That's been a habit since my brother died. I thought... if I had only woken up earlier, maybe I could've stopped him, could've helped him. So I started waking up earlier and earlier, it used to be 5:00 am, but now it's 6:30. I would check to see if my mom was still there, and she always was, and then I would look in my brothers room and... he was never there." She closes her eyes for a second and Noah squeezes her hand, making her smile slightly._

_"You don't ever sleep in though? Not since you were 15?"_

_"No, I do occasionally. Usually it's when I feel safe, protected, happy... and when I know everyone around me is okay. When... I know they aren't gonna leave me."_

_Noah nods and squeezes her hand again before he starts to speak. "Well, I'm not leaving."_

_"I know." She says, smiling as she looks up at him._

_They sit there for a moment, the night comfortably silent, with their hands tethered together._

_She could've stayed in that moment forever, if only she could, but she heard some voices talking below them and realized where they were. The villa. Where the guy she likes, the guy that is sitting next to her, is with a girl who isn't her. The most she'd ever get with him would be just friends._

_"We should probably go, it's getting late... and Hope is probably looking for you." April says after some time had passed._

_He sighs at the mention of Hope for some reason, looking away from her._

_April pulls her hand away from his and stands up, waiting for him to do so as well._

_He does get up from the bench on the rooftop, a little reluctantly she might add._

_"Well, it was nice deep-chatting with you. I'm sure we could start a podcast, you know if the whole musician and librarian thing doesn't work out." She says, trying to lighten the mood, her voice returning to it's normal upbeat tone she always kept it at in the villa._

_He laughs and smiles down at her. "Yeah, I'm sure we could."_

__

__

_"I'm sorry for getting all 'my brother died' on you. I didn't mean to be so serious tonight... I actually- I haven't told many people in my life that story. It just... came out tonight for some reason."_

__

__

_"It's okay. It is serious, but I feel like I know you a little better now. I'm sorry you had to go through that. It must be hard losing family, I can't imagine what that must've been like."_

__

__

_"Yeah, well, I made it through." She says, shrugging slightly. "You should head downstairs, I'll be there in a few minutes." She stands beside the stairs, her arms crossed._

__

__

_"You sure you're okay?" He asks._

__

__

_"Yeah, I'm okay. Go ahead." She says, motioning towards the stairs._

__

__

_She sighs as she watches him descend the stairs and probably run back to Hope..._

April remembered that night almost too well. She didn't typically tell people about her brother, but there was something about Noah that just made her feel safe and protected and... the story just came out like she said. 

Lucas didn't even know the story. Sure, he knew her brother died and how he had died, but she didn't tell him any more about it. The fiancé really should know a lot about it, but when she told him, he gave her the pity eyes and she didn't like to talk about it when people did that. 

But she had told Noah. 

She moves her eyes back up to the TV as she suddenly remembers another moment. She quickly skips to Episode 10, Day 10. The day Operation Nope was born and the day she kissed Noah...

_April heads towards the living room, in effort to get away from all the craziness of this villa._

__

__

_She'd been noticing it more and more, now that she was trying to avoid Noah._

_Two nights ago she was basically telling him her life story and that was... too close for her. Especially since she's had feelings for him since the beginning and he didn't reciprocate them._

_But a night or two ago, it seemed like he might. They were in the bathroom, getting ready for bed. Three feet apart at all times, of course, per what April liked to call Hope's regulations. And when she took her hair out of the buns she always had it up in, he said he liked her hair down._

_Complimenting her wasn't a normal thing of his in the villa, as Hope was almost always around him and she figured because he was with her, Noah didn't see her in that way._

_But that night... he complimented her._

_Although, the moment after Hope called for him and he went straight to back to her._

_She didn't know what exactly he was thinking, or whether or not he did have feelings for her, but she knew that if she continued hanging around him, her feelings would grow and she would be in too deep._

_So, she was avoiding him every chance she got._

_It made the villa seem a bit... bigger. She didn't feel grounded without Noah there, reminding her that there were real people in this place. Everyone else had almost a larger than life personality, Lottie, Hope, Bobby... they all had strong traits that made them fun or at some points annoying to be around. But Noah wasn't that way. Being around him made her feel calmer and like she actually had a place in this crazy villa._

_When she wasn't talking to him, the villa just felt even more crazy than it actually was._

_She's still thinking about it as she reaches the living room to find Noah there, fiddling with a hoodie. Hope's hoodie, the one she was just speaking to her about._

_He looks up to see her, seeming a bit startled by her presence._

_"Oh, sorry I didn't realize you were in here." She says, moving towards the door again._

_"No, it's okay. I just haven't seen you in a while, that's all. You can stay." He says, his eyes not moving away from the hoodie. He tries to loop the string with the tiny hole, but it doesn't work and he sighs quietly. "You don't happen to know how to put a string through a hoodie, do you?"_

_"Yes, I actually do. I am a hoodie connoisseur." She says, moving to sit on the couch. "Here, let me see it."_

_"What makes you think you'll have any more luck than I have?"_

_"Small hands." She says, pinching her hands as she does. "And I once proudly fixed one of mine with my handiwork, thank you very much. Well, with a shoe string and my handiwork, but still." She says as he hands over the hoodie to her._

_She tries once or twice to get the string through the hole, but it doesn't work._

_"Well, at least you tried." He says, sliding the hoodie back into his arms._

_An idea pops into her mind as he tries again. She looks around the room for a wire of some kind, remembering what her friend told her about fixing hoodies and other clothes._

_Her eyes come across a coat hanger someone left on a dangling hook. She moves off the couch to grab it and brings it back._

_"What are you doing?" Noah asks her as she sits back down._

_"If you have a wire like this, you can thread it to the string and pull it through, kind of like a needle." She says, handing the hanger to him as he stares back at her, looking both confused and impressed at the same time. "One of my friends at uni was going into fashion so she knew all the secrets and leaked them to me."_

_She doesn't say anything else as he twists the hanger into a wire and starts weaving it through the string. She feels a bit awkward just sitting there watching him gently fix the hoodie._

_"So... how have you been?" She asks him, not wanting the silence to go on any longer._

_"That depends. Have you talked to Hope much lately?"_

_"I just spoke to her." She says, remembering her conversation with Hope about him and Hope and their seemingly random fight about a string pulled out of a hoodie and who has the money in the relationship._

_"Ah." Noah breathes out, sighing softly afterwards. "Well, then not so good I guess."_

_There's a pause before Noah starts speaking again. "It's normal to fight sometimes when you're with someone all the time, right?"_

_"Yeah, I suppose." She says, trying to sound upbeat and positive but her voice falters slightly._

_He sighs again and drops the hoodie for a moment, looking up at her. "I just- I feel like everything I'm doing is wrong. I try to be good for Hope, but even that she seems to get mad at. I feel like... I don't know maybe I should've..." April meets his eye, curious on what he thinks he should've done. Except he doesn't say anything, instead, he trails off and returns his attention to the hoodie. He mumbles a quick 'never mind' as he does._

_"What is it? You should've what?"_

_"Maybe I should've... tried something with someone else. I mean, that's supposed to be the name of the game, right? You're supposed to jump around, see who you like and get on with... but I kind of just jumped into a relationship and now I'm here."_

_"It isn't bad to jump into a relationship sometimes. If it's with the right person. Is Hope the right person for you?" She says, her voice sounding unnecessarily high at the end of the question._

_"... I don't know." He says as he loops the string into the hole on the hoodie with the coat hanger wire._

_He laughs a little after he does, smiling as he looks up at her. "It worked."_

_"It worked." She repeats, smiling back at him._

_"That's... awesome. You're awesome." He says, looking up at her again, his eyes shining with admiration._

_"Me? I didn't do anything, I just sat here." She says, her cheeks blushing at the compliment, looking down at her jewelry, hoping that he doesn't see it._

_"You're the one who had the idea to use the coat hanger." He says, trying to convince her that she was in fact awesome._

_"You did all the work though and this is a thing I've already done before. Knowledge that's been passed down to me and all that."_

_"But you gave me the idea." He says, she opens her mouth to disagree again but he stops her. "Will you just take the compliment, you infuriating woman?"_

_"Fine. Thank you." She says, smiling as she runs her fingers through one of her stray hairs. "You find me infuriating?"_

_"When you won't take a compliment, yeah, I do. I have to tell you, April, I don't know how you don't see how special you are."_

_"Because I'm not. I'm not really all that special, I'm just a girl, a girl who happened to be picked for this show but still... I'm just a girl."_

_Noah scoffs quietly at that. "That's just so not true. I don't know how to get you to believe otherwise, but... you are special. You're special to me."_

_Well, what's that supposed to mean? She thinks, the words almost springing out of her mouth before she stops herself._

_"I should go, there's probably some challenge to do or some drama to attend to." She says, standing up and looking away from him. She thought if she stayed here another minute, exactly what she thought would happen, will happen. She'll be in too deep._

_"Wait," Noah says, suddenly out of his seat and grabbing her wrist._

_"What?" She asks, her voice coming out a bit loud as she turns back to him._

_She's surprised to find him pulling her into a tight hug. She lets out a contended sigh as she returns the hug, on her tiptoes as she wraps her arms around his neck._

_She releases the hug after a minute, but he can't take his eyes off her and his arms are still wrapped around her, apparently not wanting to let her go._

Present April sits there on her couch, completely still, as she watches the sequence pan out. She realizes exactly what Hope was talking about as she watches the camera zoom slightly in on Noah's face. 

That was it, that was the look. His slight smile, his eyes showing more that light than ever, that was it, that was the look Hope was talking about. Like she was the sun and he just couldn't look away. 

She feels herself in that moment again as her eyes are glued to the television...

_How he was looking at her, how he was complimenting her whenever she was around him... they all felt a bit like signs. And then, right there, staring at her like that, their faces close enough to hear each others heartbeats... She thought... maybe he did feel the same way she did._

_She had two options: she could turn around and leave the room, leaving the guy she liked that could potentially like her, or she could jump. She could jump and maybe, just maybe, he would catch her._

_So that's what she did._

_She caved the distance between them as she leaned in and kissed him. He was taken aback for a moment, but almost instantaneously started kissing her back._

_It wasn't a perfect first kiss, it wasn't like an end of movie kiss in the rain, but it felt like one to her._

_She felt herself smiling into the kiss - after about a week of staring from afar and overthinking and wondering if he even liked her as a friend, he kissed her back._

_But all too soon, he pulled away from her and his face turned almost unreadable, his eyes looking guilty but cheeks still blushing red from the kiss._

_April immediately stiffens and moves away from him, remembering that he was with Hope and not her. And now Noah was standing there with that almost shocked and guilty look on his face and she realizes something._

_It was a mistake. Them, doing this. They both had partners and even though she'd made it clear that her and Bobby were only going to be friends, they were still coupled up. And Noah was with Hope. The lights were flashing red in her mind, screaming that she had just made a mistake._

_'Cause he was in love with Hope. And not her._

_She covers her mouth and utters out an 'oh my god' as she starts to walk away, trying to remember how to breath._

_She could hear him calling out her name but she ignores it as she flees the scene._

_What the hell was she doing?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the chapter ends there! 
> 
> Like I said before I really enjoyed writing this, even though some of the parts made even me emotional. I have a family member who attempted suicide and my heart goes out to those who have ever lost someone in that way. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you guys liked this chapter and there'll be more soon. I have some angst prepared for the next few or so chapters so I'm excited to write that.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! So here's the next chapter, sorry if there was a little bit of a delay there, I was a little bit busy with the holidays and everything. Hope you guys like this chapter, I had fun writing it so yeah.  
> Also ThoracicOrchid looked over this one. I find I can't post without someone looking over it, since I make too mistakes to count lol. Anyway check out her work if you haven't already, you're missing out if you don't!

Noah had spent the last few weeks of November trying to have fun. He wasn't the type to go out bar-hopping, or to even do anything really that was casual, fun... but now he's single and in effort to get over his newly-realized feelings for April, he's been trying out new things. 

So he'd been going out every single week on Friday for drinks with his coworkers. He'd even had a few bar hookups over the course of November as well. 

He knew that if this were a book, this was a part where he was going majorly out of character. Noah? Out having fun? Hooking up with random people and then not remembering their name a week later? 

Noah wasn't that guy. He was the committed, serious kind of guy. The get-married-and-have-kids kind of guy. If April were here, she'd say that was his Noah-ism. That it was in his DNA to be that guy. 

But, you know what, maybe he wasn't. Maybe he wasn't meant to have any of that stuff. Maybe he's fine with being the kind of guy that goes to bars and hooks up with random chicks. 

But... he knew that, deep-down, he's not fine with that. He knew that he's not that person. He didn't want to be that person. 

Love, companionship, marriage, kids eventually... it's all he has ever wanted. And it's his fault that he doesn't have it now. It's his fault that he lost April and now she's getting married.

So, he tricked himself into believing that he could be that guy and went out with his coworkers every week. 

He's flirting with a blonde woman today, one who had recognized him from across the room and who had recently found an article about him and Hope's split up very intriguing. He doesn't find her particularly interesting, but he'd found out that was something good when searching for a casual hookup. A cheesy line comes out of her mouth and Noah's about to reply before his eye catches brown hair accompanied by a laugh he'd probably never forget in a million years. Even if he wanted to. 

Chelsea's blonde bob appears sitting right next to the girl he'd been thinking about constantly throughout the last few weeks. He'd tried to get her out of his mind, part of the going to bars and hooking up was just to get himself to stop thinking about her. But somehow it never was enough. 

And now there she is, across the bar. She looks relaxed, with her hair down in loose curls. Relaxed was not a state he had seen her in much, since she was always thinking so much about everything, but it looked good on her. 

"Excuse me?" The blonde in front of him interrupts his train of thought by saying in a snotty tone, clearly irritated that he was looking at April instead of her. 

"Sorry, I have to go do something." He says, not even giving her a second glance as he turns to go see the two of them.

He taps April on the shoulder after he had made his way across the bar.

"Hey!" She says after she turned around to see him, her face looking a bit surprised to see him there. "What are you doing here?" 

"I could ask you the same question." Noah says. He'd assumed it was some sort of girls night, but her and Chelsea didn't do that often since they were both so busy with other aspects of their lives. 

"Well, I asked you first." 

"I come here every week, drinks with coworkers, remember?" He answers. She'd tried to call him last week, but he was out doing what he was doing now and trying to keep his mind off of her, so he didn't answer his phone that day. 

"Oh, yeah." She says, but her face is still unsure. "Are you really doing that now? That doesn't really seem like you." 

He opens his mouth but is left without words for a moment. Of course she knew. She knew that it wasn't him to be doing this, she understood him. She was one of the few people who could read him like a book. Which was really saying something, since he was the one who was usually doing the reading. 

He didn't really know how to respond or explain it, so he deflects the question. "What are you doing here?"

"Double date night." She says, her eyes darting across the room to where Lucas and Henrik sit, laughing with a random guy in the corner of the room. "Although, it's more like a girls night for us and a guys night for them." 

"Girls on tour!" Chelsea chimes in excitedly. "Also, hi Noah." 

"Hey, Chelsea. How have you been doing?" 

"Good, some problems, usually with this one. But generally, pretty good." She says, gesturing towards April. 

"You're a problem?" He turns to April, smirking, having fun with this. 

"I am not! If anything, she's the problem. She took my earbuds and has kept them since. I was listening to 'Heart of Glass' by Blondie, too. God knows you don't take a woman's headphones while she's listening to Blondie." 

"This blondie was Christmas decorating and you weren't helping at all!" She points to herself as she says blondie. She turns back to Noah. "Plus, you know, she hates the wedding planning. The other day, I was trying to get her to choose the table cover's color and she wouldn't even look up at the swatches!"

The mention of the wedding planning seems to shut April up for a moment and her eyes look a bit apologetic as she looks up at Noah. She seems apprehensive to talk about the wedding, or least to talk about while he's here.

"I'm going to go get us some drinks," She says, looking over to the other side of the bar where the bartender is. "Noah, you want anything?"

"No thanks, I'm good." He mumbles before she moves over there. He turns his attention to Chelsea. 

"So you're not coming to my events anymore? You didn't show up to the one secret Santa gift draw." She asks him.

"Yeah, sorry, I've been a little busy." is the lame excuse he uses this time.

Chelsea just nods and purses her lips. They've never been left together for a long period of time, Noah always assumed this was how it would go. Awkwardly. 

"So why are you still doing those party things? Don't you have enough experience to say whether or not you want to give it a try?" He asks her, trying to fill the silence. 

"Yeah, I think I probably do. But I've had these ones planned for a while and I don't want to cancel them." She pauses for a moment, then opens her mouth to say more. "And you know, once April and Lucas get married, we'll all grow apart. I know we already have a bit, but it's going to be really different once they walk down that aisle. So I just wanted a few more opportunities to hold on to what we have as a group. And it's worth all the work to see her that happy." 

"See who that happy?" 

"April. You usually show up to the events, or at least you used to, and she lights up when you're around. I mean, even right now, look at her." He looks over to April, across the bar, who's smiling brightly while speaking to the women behind the bar. She laughs a little as she pushes one of her brown curls behind her ear, the cute gesture making Noah smile and practically melt into a puddle beside Chelsea. 

"Yesterday she was crying while wearing a wedding dress. But now, you show up and she's smiling like that."

That makes Noah turn his attention away from April and back to Chelsea again. "You guys went wedding dress shopping?" She nods quickly, "Why was April crying in her wedding dress?" 

"Well, it wasn't her wedding dress, she didn't even pick one. But to answer your question - she said she didn't look like herself, she didn't feel like herself in any of the dresses she tried on. And Lucy Koh insisted on coming with us and she made snarky comments the entire time. She even went so far as to bring her own old wedding dress, saying that she would give it to her but that April wouldn't fit in it so she can't." 

"That's bullshit." Noah mumbles angrily beside her. 

"I know. Lucy's wedding dress is a size 1 so technically it is true, but she made her feel awful. April tries to play it off as nothing, but I know it gets to her. Her and Lucas have been fighting this week again as well." 

"About?" Noah asks.

"Everything, anything. She brought up kids the other day and, in her words, it didn't end very well. And about... a bunch of other things." She says, sounding like she was thinking of a certain thing, but doesn't say it and looks away from him. "Anyways, um, I put your name in the hat of names anyway when we drew them for the secret Santa and I picked for you so here." She says, handing him a small folded slip of paper, one that looks like one from a fortune cookie. 

"Isn't this supposed to be more of optional thing?"

"Well, not for you it isn't." She says as Noah opens up the paper to see April's name on it. He looks up to Chelsea, who's smiling at him. "Just make her happy, okay?" 

He's about to say something back, but he sees April coming back over to them out of the corner of his eye, so he just smiles and nods, putting the little slip of paper into one of his pockets. 

April makes her way to them and hands Chelsea her drink. "What were we talking about?" 

"Nothing." Chelsea mumbles, then takes a sip of the drink April gave her. 

"Yeah, right, nothing." Noah adds as well.

April looks between them questioningly. "What, are you two, like, secret best friends now? 'Cause I would love that." 

"No, we're not that close." Chelsea denies it. "Alright, babes, I'm gonna go see how our guys are doing." 

She gives her an air-kiss before walking over to where Lucas and Henrik are sitting and sliding into their booth. Lucas looks up once he sees Chelsea, over to April and she catches his eyes but looks down almost immediately. Noah can feel Lucas's eyes glaring into the back of his head, but right now, he decides not to care.

"So which April are you tonight?" She makes a confused expression. "You know, there's Happy and Sunshine-y April, Anxious April, Drunk April... Drunk April's usually pretty fun, although I've only met her once or twice." 

She scoffs at him but chuckles a little before she does. "Well, right now you've got Happy and Sunshine-y April but I wouldn't expect her to stay for very long. Happiness is..." She pauses, sighing, looking over towards Lucas. "... not a thing that lasts for very long, not in my world. I don't know, it's like life gets better, then it just..." Her hand moves down in a southern direction, hand-gesturing that life goes downhill. "It's so weird, I was watching myself in the villa the other day and I was _so_ -" She starts, but Noah cuts her off, taken aback a bit by the words 'watching' and 'villa' in the same sentence. 

"What do you mean watching yourself? Are you watching our season?" 

She bites her lip and quickly rubs her eye in frustration, probably not wanting to tell him about this. "Um, yeah I actually am. It's nothing, I'm just watching it because... I wanted to." 

"Which part are you watching?" He asks, his words coming out quickly, not being able to stop them. He needed to know whether or not she was watching them couple up. 

"Um, I just stopped at Operation Nope. That brought back some memories. Turns out I didn't remember a lot of things until I started watching it. Now it's like I'm re-living the lot of it." 

"Really? I remember a ton of stuff." He says. He thought back to the villa nearly every day so you'd better believe he remembered it. All too well. 

"Okay, tell me what you remember. I bet it's just general stuff, that tends to happen with memories." 

"Well, I remember a lot of the things that happened before Casa. Like, there was this one time where Hope was painting my nails-" 

"Because you were whipped." She says, interrupting him. 

"Confident in my masculinity." He says, making her laugh as she takes a sip of her drink with a straw. "Anyway, she was painting my toenails and you came over to the daybeds and-"

"Then you tried to stump me with your knowledge of music. Which, by the way, is little to none." She finishes for him. 

"It is not little to none! I know some music. And I didn't try to stump you, I was just humming something and Hope asked you what it was."

"Suuure, you didn't. Also, you do not know your music, I remember some of the songs you did, they were practically all Toto. They were the easiest songs to guess." 

"Well, you got them all right, so why does it matter?" 

"Because you tried to stump me, a professional musician! I remember after I guessed a few of em', Rocco started singing Wonderwall or some shit and I laughed and it got awkward. Then, Hope went to fill her water bottle and you were still trying to have me get one wrong. I remember you hummed a certain tune and I could not for the life of me think of what it was. I was to the point where I was about to ask one of the producers to look it up for me and-" 

"And then I told you I made it up." He says, finishing up the story. "I couldn't help it, you just made the cutest face when you didn't know it. And then you giggled when I said that I made it up."

"Yeah?" She says, her smile turning a bit shy and her cheeks blushing slightly. "I can't believe you remember all of that." 

"Well, I do... actually I think I remember everything. Every moment. At least, um, every moment... with you." He confesses to her quietly with the background noise of the bar behind them, the sound of clicking glasses and laughter. 

"Yeah, um, I do too." She says, her voice barely above a whisper, like that was for his ears only. 

He smiles as he looks at her, their faces barely three inches apart. His eyes flicker down to her lips for a moment, but he looks away quickly, remembering her fiancé is sitting in the corner. 

_Speak of the devil_ , he thinks, as he sees Lucas coming over to their spot at the bar. 

He grabs April's wrist almost aggressively. "Come on, we should go." He whispers to her, with alcohol on his breath. 

"Are Chelsea and Henrik leaving?" She looks over to where their table is, where they're clearly not leaving. 

"No, but we took two cars and I want to go." He says, pulling her away with him but she lingers.

"Hold on a second. I don't want to go, we've only been here a couple hours. Why do you suddenly have the need to leave so bad?"

He scoffs at her not leaving right away with him and when she asked him why, his eye flickered towards Noah for a split second before he quickly looked back to April, his feet shuffling back and forth. "I just want to go, okay? What, would you rather stay here, with him?" He says, his voice getting rather loud as his anger escalates. 

Noah immediately wants to take action, do something, anything to protect her but he knows that it wouldn't make the situation any better so he stays still in his spot. 

"Just give me a minute, alright? I'll meet you in the car, I'll drive." She sighs as she grabs her purse, desperately searching for the keys.

"I'll wait by the door." He says, before sending Noah a death glare and then walking off to stand near the exit, watching them. 

"I'm sorry for him, I hate when he gets this way, I-" She quickly gets out, her voice anxiety ridden, before Noah stops her. 

"Hey, hey it's okay. It's fine. You go, everything's gonna be alright." He says, lowering his head to look her in the eye, trying his best to calm her down. 

"O-okay." She manages to stammer out. She takes a few shaky breaths in before she walks away from him and over to Lucas.

He sighs as he watches them walk out of the bar.

He sits down on one of the barstools. The bartender comes down to the area he is in. 

"Would you like anything?" She asks him. 

"Yes, uh, I'll take anything strong." He says. 

_Fuck it_ , he thinks. He hated this part. Hated that he treated her like shit, and that she let him. That she stayed with him. That she's getting married to him. He hated everything about this. Everything except for her. 

He drinks down whatever the bartender gave him, hoping somehow it would make the pain go away. It doesn't.

But he drinks down the next few and stays at his seat in the bar until there's only a couple people left around him. 

"Hey, long time no see, stranger." A familiar voice comes up behind him. 

He tries to think who that voice belongs to, but in his drunken fog, he can't tell until she appears on the barstool beside his, sitting next to him. 

"Blake..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And done! We're heading into Blake territory...


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again! I actually did pretty good with timing this week and the next chapter might be coming out sooner than later! But you know, maybe not since my track record ain't all that good with posting chapters on time. Anyway, I know I'm annoying with the notes so I'll make it quick... this is the next one! And I honestly kind of like it so I hope you guys do too!  
> Beta reader - margotmuses

Lucas was still passed out in bed when April woke up the next morning. The alarm clock beside their bed read 5:30. There it was again, the bad sleep, the uncertainty...

The last couple days had been a wreck. There was the wedding dress shopping, which had ended with her breaking down in front of Chelsea, crying because she looked in the mirror and didn't see herself. She didn't even feel like she was getting married, it was as if all this time she'd spent putting on dresses and picking out invitations was for someone else entirely.

There was Lucas's mother, who very clearly disliked her and did not approve of her being her son's bride. She brought that stupid wedding dress too, the one with the pretty white lace and the train... but of course she wouldn't fit in that. That took a hit to her self-esteem for sure. She knew that she wasn't fat or ugly, but she wasn't the prettiest or thinnest person either. And of course Lucas never picks up on the subtle hits and jabs she makes at April so he lets his mother in on the wedding planning whenever she wants. The Koh's always had a knack for getting whatever they wanted anyway.

Then there was the fighting with Lucas. He'd found her on the couch watching Love Island the other day, when she was watching herself kiss Noah, and got mad at her because she was watching it. Not just watching it, in fact, but watching that specific part. She knew it wasn't a completely innocent act and her reasonings behind it weren't exactly innocent either, but she hadn't done anything inherently wrong. But he still stormed off when he found out.

And there was the topic of kids. Similar to Noah and Hope, Lucas and April were on opposite sides of the kids debate. Lucas never wanted kids and she understood why he didn't. He was career-driven, she was somewhat as well, and he didn't want to bring children into a world that was so clearly messed up. He also didn't want his kids being raised like he was, with his father out of the house most of the time, only dropping by every once in a while to give him an expensive fancy gift or an empty-worded speech about hard work and why it mattered that he was gone constantly. He didn't want to pass that childhood on to his kids so he decided a long time ago that he wouldn't have any.

She understood his reasoning for not wanting them... but she does want children. Even though her career is a huge part of who she is, she wants a family & personal life as well as a professional one. She had dreams about teaching her kids to sing, to play piano... but Lucas didn't have any similar dreams and that was a problem in their relationship. One of the many.

She thought he might've changed his mind after they got engaged so she brought it up in a conversation they were having last week. They didn't say a word to each other that night after they'd fought.

And then there was last night. It seemed like everything was good, everything was back to normal and she was happy... but then came Lucas and the storm of him being drunk as well. When she got him home, she made him drink a ton of water and then he started talking about Noah...

"You were flirting with him! I saw you two, you were standing not even 3 feet away from him and you guys were smiling like there was no tomorrow. I don't want him around you, he's no good for you..." He said, his words slurring together like they never have. 

"He's no good for me? And excuse me, I decide who gets to be around me, not you. You may be my fiancé but you do not control me and my actions. I can be around the people I like and who make me happy. And I wasn't flirting with him, I was just trying to hold onto happiness that I haven't had in fucking days, Lucas. Days."

"If you're so unhappy with me, then why don't you leave?" He spit out the question. 

"You know what, I really don't know anymore. If you find an answer for me, will you please tell me? Asking for a friend."

Her own words come back to her at that moment. Last night wasn't a total disaster, Noah had showed up for the first time in a while and it felt good to see him, to talk to him again. But, as she said, happiness goes as quickly as it comes in her world so of course Lucas had to come in with his jealousy and possessiveness and screw everything up.

She sat on the floor of her kitchen, thinking about it. She'd gone in here to make breakfast, but she ended up burning herself on the stupid bowl in the microwave so she quickly put it under water and then sat down on the ground, feeling like a failure.

She felt like she was failing at everything. Being a bride, being Lucas's fiancée, at being happy... she was failing at everything.

The only time she didn’t feel like a failure was when she was with Noah. When she was around him, he made her feel like she was someone special. There weren’t expectations for who she had to be when she was around him, unlike how it was with everyone else. Lucas’s mother, Lucas, her bandmates, even Chelsea sometimes… they all expected a certain thing out of her. But she could just be herself around Noah. She could be Happy and Sunshine-y April or she could be… anything. She could be anxious, angry, sad… she didn’t have to hide any of her emotions from him. Which was something she had to do with almost every other person in her life. And that made her realize something.

She grabs her phone from the kitchen counter and goes into her text messages. 

April: hey are you home?

She sends to Noah, then proceeding to tap her fingers impatiently on the floor in her kitchen. 

April: and awake? sorry.

She adds after a minute, realizing it was the weekend and only 7:30.

She puts her phone down after another minute passes, giving up slightly, but the phone lights up with a response.

Noah: yeah, I am. why? is everything okay?

April: everything's fine. I'm coming over to your flat. Is that okay?

She types quickly before getting up off the ground to grab her keys off the key rack.

Noah: do you really need to? do you even have my address? are you sure everything is alright?

April: everything is fine, Noah. I just really need to talk to you. is it okay if I come over to your flat or not? I have the address from when we sent the invitations. 

Noah: fine, go ahead. just, next time send me a warning the night before you make impulsive home visits. 

April: well, it wouldn’t be impulsive then, would it?  


She types before grabbing a notepad to leave a note for Lucas. What should she even say? She shouldn’t lie to him, but Lucas would definitely be mad if he knew it was Noah’s apartment she was going to.

 _Going to a friends’, be back in 30 - April_ \- is what she decides to leave him with, then quickly swings the door open and walks to her car. 

She didn’t really know if this was a good idea or not, but it felt like something she needed to do. She needed to get this off her chest. 

Noah’s flat isn’t too far out from where her home is, so she gets there in slightly under 10 minutes. She goes up to the door grabbing her phone and putting it up to her ear. 

“Hey, I’m here.” She says into the phone. “Can you, like, buzz me up or something?” 

“April, are you sure we really have to talk today? Is something going on with you? Did he.. ?” Noah trails off, letting her make her own conclusions to that sentence. 

“No, no, nothing's going on. He didn’t do anything. I just- I really would like to talk to you and it’s Saturday and I’m already here and would you please just buzz me up so I can come up and speak to you in person?” 

He sighs softly, the phone and everything around her silent for a moment, then the door in front of her starts to open. 

“Thank you. I’ll see you in a minute.” She quickly says into the phone before practically running into the building. She gets up onto the elevator and presses 3. 

“355... 356…” She whispers to herself as she walks down the hall of the building, the walls rosy and the floor carpeted in a monotone, gray color. Chelsea would not have approved of the interior design, but she isn’t thinking about that as she reaches the door of the address she had listed of the notepad in her hand. “359. Here”

She rings the doorbell to stand out there awkwardly for a moment. She feels her nerves start to unravel. She didn’t even think about this, what was he going to say? She had gone over her speech in her mind about fifty times in the car, but somehow she never thought of what he was going to respond with. 

She didn’t even have time to worry about it as the door opened to reveal him there. He holds the door up in a weird way, as if to block her from inside his apartment, away from whatever he was hiding in there. 

“Hi. Do you want to go somewhere to talk? We should go somewhere to talk, like a park or something… someplace other than here.” He says, his words coming out fast and with an anxious tone behind them. 

“No, here’s fine.” She says, gesturing around the doorway. “I just need to say something and then I’ll go. This wasn’t meant to be a like I go over to your flat, we get coffee as we talk kind of thing, it’s more of a like I speak for about five minutes to you about something and then I go. I told Lucas I’d be back in 30 minutes anyway so I’m really betting my time here.” 

“Okay, well, you go, speak.” 

She takes a deep breath in before she starts. “Okay, so you’ve been avoiding me.” He opens his mouth to say something, to defend his actions maybe but she keeps speaking. “No need to say anything, it’s just a fact, Noah, you’ve been avoiding me. You didn’t come to Chelsea’s event because you’ve been avoiding me. I’m not a dense person, I pick up on things, I know and I understand that you have been avoiding me. What I don’t understand is… why. See, I do this thing where I just go into my head and I think constantly about things until I can figure things out b-but I can’t seem to figure out why you feel the need to go out of your way to avoid me. I’ve come up with theories and I’ve tried to ignore it, for a month now actually, but you know what, I can’t. I can’t because you are a part of my life. Like it or not, you are. I like my life with you in it, it’s a lot better than it was before. Because I get to be myself, I get to be honest when I’m around you. I-i need that, okay? I have a job where I’m supposed to be a happy perfect image in the media and I have a fiancé who wants me to be like that all the time. He wants me to be perfect, he wants me to not talk to any guys but him and if I have to deal with that constantly without anything else, anyone else, I think I just might go insane. I need you to b-be there, okay? I need you to be there for me. If not for me, then for my sanity and just basic human decency, okay?” She reaches the end of her speech, out of breath. She looks up at him for a response, instead just sees him there with a grin on his face. “God, I know I must seem crazy, I’m sorry. I woke up at 5 am today, I think I drank all the coffee that was inside the house and that isn’t good and I think maybe I’ve already gone insane with all of last night’s events and…” She trails off, not having any more words to say and looks at the ground with embarrassment.

“April.” He says her name, but she’s still staring at the ground, “April… will you please look at me?” She looks up at him again, his eyes softer and gentler this time as he looks at her, with a smile still appearing on his face. “I’ll be there, okay?” He whispers to her. 

“What?” She says, the corners of her mouth perking up and the embarrassed feeling quickly starting to fade away. 

“You heard me. I’ll be there.” He says, his voice still no lower than a whisper. “But only for your sanity, okay?... because we don’t need any more musicians going crazy.”

“Okay… you’ll be there.” She says, a smile growing on her face. She laughs for no reason really, she just can’t stop smiling because he didn’t think she was insane. 

She just about to go before she hears some background noise, a toilet flushing, coming from inside his apartment. “Oh, is that your roommate?”

Noah opens his mouth but nothing comes out for a moment. “No, actually, it isn’t.” Then he sighs, it coming out as a sigh of exasperation.

“Well, who is it then?” She asks, curious on who’s in there. “Do you have someone over? I’m sorry I didn’t mean to…” She trails off once she sees a woman coming up behind Noah and then moving to stand next to him. 

All of a sudden the memories come flooding back to her. The clicking of the heels, the auburn brown hair, the eyes that were similar to her very own… Hearing Chelsea remark at how similar the two of them seemed as she fled from the firepit and the sight of him with someone else… 

Suddenly it makes sense… why he didn’t want to talk here, why he initially didn’t want her coming over, why he was blocking the door from her view… he was blocking her from seeing her. The girl he'd switched on her for. 

“Oh hi, April.” Her vindictive voice comes through, cutting her thoughts off. “I was just leaving. Don’t worry, I didn’t fuck him… or did I?” Her laugh is bitter and the air cuts as her laugh stops and her icy glare returns. “Guess you’ll have to figure that one out yourself.” She says as she brushes past her to leave the apartment.

That leaves Noah standing there with that once again guilty look on his face and April standing in front of him, with all the questions that haven’t been answered yet on the very tip of her tongue...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, she actually came up with a good cliffhanger this time! Sorry to leave you on one again, but this is just how it works! Next chapter is the fight and I'm very excited! It's ramping up a little bit...


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First post of 2021! It's not been great so far but hopefully things will get better soon! This is the next chapter, I'm actually kind of proud of this one. I've been sitting on it for a while and now that I've read it over about a million times, I think it's time to post it.  
> Beta reader - margotmuses  
> Also thanks to ThoracicOrchid for the moral support! You're the best :)

Noah woke up to a girl on his couch and a text from the girl he was trying _not_ to think about. He brought Blake home last night, which was an infinitely stupid thing of him to do, but he blamed it on himself drinking too much. In his drunk state of mind, Blake almost looked like April. Key word: almost. He almost made a very very bad mistake that he would regret the moment he woke up today, but he didn’t. 

Neither of them were in their right minds last night so he’d stopped it once they stumbled into his apartment at nearly midnight. 

Blake had just about as many drinks as he had, so he’d decided it’d be better to just let her stay for the night instead of finding someone to take her home in the dead of night. 

He’d given her some old blankets he’d found in the back of his closet and he left her to sleep on his couch. He thought it’d been a good decision to keep her here, but now, with April texting him saying she was coming over to his flat, he was beginning to think the opposite. He started to panic, if April came over and she saw Blake, what was she going to think? She would see the bad part of him again, the part that made him choose Blake over her. He couldn’t let her see Blake here. 

“Blake.” He whispers quietly, kneeling to where she was sleeping. “Blake. Come on, you can’t be that deep of a sleeper. Blake!” He’s thinking of splashing water in her face, before she finally wakes up with the slight shout he made. 

“Jee, that’s an awfully nice way to wake up a girl, Noah.” She says as she slowly sits up, stretching as she does. “Ugh, my head is killing me.” She says, holding her face in her hands. 

“I know, mine is too, but you need to go. Call one of your friends. Hell, walk if I care- but April’s going to be here in a few minutes and I really need you not to be here when she is.” 

“Oh I get it, your girlfriend’s coming over here and you don’t want her finding me and making assumptions about what happened here.” 

“Besides the girlfriend part, I think you got it down pat.” 

“Hmmmm… I think I am going to make a cup of coffee first. Then of course, use the bathroom, gotta mark my territory, ya know?” She says as she moves to his kitchen, him following quickly behind her.

“Blake, this isn’t funny. This isn’t funny at all, you need to go or else she’s gonna see you and that’s not gonna be a good look for me. You don’t need coffee or to mark your territory, just go home.” 

“Noah, hun, you can’t send a girl home after a night like that without a cup of coffee first.”

“Uh, yeah I can, especially when we didn’t do anything last night, do I need to remind you of that? You only slept on my couch because I didn’t want you driving home drunk and it was too late to call a cab or a friend. Any other circumstances, you would’ve gone home already.” 

“Well, we’re not under different circumstances, are we? That means I can stay, at least for a few more minutes.” 

“Blake please. This girl means… so much to me. I can’t lose her again. And if she sees you, that just might happen. Please don’t let that happen. Please, just go.” He says, practically on his knees begging for her to leave.

“Fine. I’ll leave. But I have to use the bathroom first.” Just before she walks away, the phone he’d left on the counter starts ringing. Blake raises her eyebrows before scampering over to the bathroom.

He picked up the phone to hear April’s voice, stating she was already here. He felt that a wave of panic again and tried to get her to go home, to figure out if this impromptu visit was urgent, but he’d hear the pleading, anxious tone in her voice and had given in, pressing the button that would allow her in. 

His mind was going about a million miles an hour during the very few minutes in which she was probably humming along to the elevator music. He doesn’t even have the time to think up a new plan or get Blake out of there before he hears a soft knock on his door.

He discovers that April’s mind was probably moving as fast as his because as soon as he opened the door she started talking. It was one of her habits - when she couldn’t figure out something on her own or the something was unclear or uncertain, she tended to talk a bit too much and a bit too fast. He couldn’t help but smile at the way she called herself crazy and talked until she was out of breath. For a second, he forgot all about Blake and everything else, really, because her and her annoying habits were here and that was really all that mattered. And he didn’t care for a moment, about the whole avoiding her thing and the worry that his feelings would grow more if he was around her more, he just wants to stay in this moment with her forever. Where she was talking on and on and he could whisper small little sayings of reassurance and everything would be just fine. 

But everything wasn’t about to be just fine. 

Just as they were about to say goodbye, Blake came out of the bathroom, dressed and in full makeup. He was sure that she did this to spite them - for kicking her off love island, for ruining her chance at love or winning the 50,000 pounds… whatever petty reason Blake had for coming out didn’t really even matter. 

When he came back to the villa with Blake by his side, he saw April sitting alone and he suddenly felt as though he should be stamped with a big red stamper they used to mark with books saying ‘guilty’. Of not trusting her enough to stick. Of hurting her. Of breaking her heart. And looking at April’s face right now, maybe he should be stamped by that thing again. 

“...or did I?” Blake’s bitter laugh fills the air and her eyes flicker towards Noah, looking for a reaction, but right now all he can focus on is April. 

April’s never been hard to read, at least not for him, he could read her from the slight movement of her hand to her wristbands or the inevitable sigh that would always come when she was upset about something, but right now her face was almost unreadable. Her smile was fading from when Blake first came out and acknowledged her, April never failing to be polite, even if it was to a person like Blake. Her eyes looked stern and when they passed over him, there was a hint of disappointment flickering in her now deep brown eyes, that came along with the thousands of questions that were probably filling her mind at that very second. 

“Guess you’ll have to figure that one out yourself.” Blake says as she pushes past April to make her way to the elevator.

They stand in silence for a moment. Noah didn’t know exactly what to expect after that, whether he should prep his answers like he was going to be on a witness stand or whether she was just going to walk away the moment they said goodbye. 

“Um… Noah?” April finally questions, the first thing she’d said after nearly 2 minutes of silence. 

“Yeah?” He responds, not finding the courage in himself to look up at her, instead choosing to stare at the rug that was sitting in front of his door. 

“Why was Blake just here?” She asks him, her voice growing out of the meek whisper it was just a second ago and into a more confident tone. 

“She… she came home with me last night. She showed up a while after you left with Lucas.” He says, moving his head up to glance in her direction, but he still can’t meet her eye. 

“And you guys… wow. Just wow, okay.”

“April, we didn’t, I swear to God we didn’t…” 

“You know what, no, you don’t get to say that. You don’t get to stand here with that look on your face and say nothing happened. You can’t even look me in the eye right now. Look at me and tell me that.” 

He lets out an aggravated sigh, but he finally looks up to see her face. It’s the same one she had on that night, when he switched on her. The anger and disappointment in her eyes and the hurt that was behind it all in her lips, as they tremble as she speaks even though each one of her words could and would cut him like a knife.

“We were drunk… and she came home with me. I understand how it looks… but nothing happened.” 

“I don’t believe that for a second. Wow, I can’t believe this. I really trusted you, I did, I really believed you. I believed that you regretted that you picked her but here you’ve just done it again. Something happened, Noah, something _had_ to happen.” 

“Would it even matter if something did?” He says, starting to get frustrated with all of this. “I mean, we’re not together. This isn’t that night all over again. I didn’t pick her, I was just drunk and Blake, she was just- she was there.” 

“She was there? What, is that your new excuse to just do this all over again? This is a stupid pattern of yours, Noah. You and Hope break up and then you just fuck whoever the hell is there and that person just happens to be Blake every time, right? She just happens to show up and you just can’t resist.” She says, the anger behind her words clearer than ever as her tone gets harsher and harsher with him. 

“I didn’t fuck her, April! I never have. I feel like I’m going mad here, I didn’t sleep with Blake.” 

“Okay well, so what if you didn’t sleep with her. You’ve been acting strange all month. You broke up with Hope, you’ve been going out, you’ve been ignoring me for god knows what reason, what is going on with you?” 

“N-nothing, nothing is going on with me at all.” He stutters out, hating himself for lying to her. 

“That is not true. You know, I didn’t push before because I didn’t want to pry into your personal business but now I really need to know. What is going on with you? What is making you behave in this way? What made you choose to take Blake home? Oh, yeah and there’s Blake. Didn’t forget about her. Why did you bring her home? Is she just who you immediately think of when you can’t have Hope? O-or Me? When you can’t have your first choice or even- even your second choice, you just have to turn to Blake?” She says, her voice starting to stutter again, the hurt clouding her voice exactly as it did on that night.

“It wasn’t like that, April, I didn’t just call Blake up just because I needed someone to be there, she was just there. I didn’t even mean for this to happen, I didn’t mean for you to even see her, I-” 

“Oh so you were gonna hide it from me? That’s really good to know, Noah, that you just hide things from your friends. God, I can’t believe you’re doing this again.” 

“You’re putting words in my mouth, I wasn’t going to hide this from you, April! And what am I doing again? This isn’t that night all over again-” 

“Yeah, no, no, it isn’t. Except it kind of is, because you’re doing the same thing again! You had your first choice, Hope, and then if you can’t have her, you have to settle for another girl. You had to settle and kiss me back because you and Hope were on the rocks or you were bored and then when you didn’t think you could have me, you chose her! You know, if you just took me out of the equation, you’re basically making the same mistake here, Noah!” 

“None of that is true! You think I kissed you just because Hope and I were fighting? I kissed you because I had actual real feelings for you.” _And I still do_ , he thinks, the words almost falling right out but he stops himself before it happens. “And I’m not making the same mistake because I didn’t actually do anything! This isn’t me choosing her over you, I told you I regretted doing that and I do. I’m not doing it again. You’re engaged to Lucas and I- I’m just trying to find someone out there in the real world.” 

“And Blake is your choice? You chose her back then, on a whim, and now you’re choosing her again? You’re not choosing her over me, but you really are… choosing her?” Her voice doesn’t sound as harsh as it did seconds ago, it breaks slightly with the question, the tone in her voice making his heart sink. Noah doesn’t know what to say in response so he just stares at the ground. “I really thought I knew you this time, I really thought that I could trust you… And you know sometimes I just sit and I think about why we didn’t end up together, why we didn’t leave the villa together, and then this happens and it’s like ‘oh yeah, this is why’.” 

“Why didn’t we?” Noah asks, his voice sounding incredibly quiet compared to hers. 

“Because you do stuff like this, you choose the wrong people. You chose the wrong person. You don’t like to make decisions because you don’t want to hurt the people you care about, but it seems like when you do, all you do is hurt me. You aren’t incapable of making good decisions, Noah, but for some reason you always tend to float towards the option that will hurt others around you. Even when you know it’s something you’ll regret later, you still do it because… well, I don’t know why.” She pauses for a moment, sighing and looking to the floor. “I don’t know, maybe the friend thing doesn’t work, maybe I can’t be around you when you’re like this.” 

“When I’m like what, April? A human? A person who makes mistakes and has flaws like every other fucking person on this earth?” He started to get angry. Angry at himself for choosing Blake the first time, and for bringing Blake home and setting off all those bad memories of him in April, for making her see that distrust in him again. But the anger came into his voice and the words he was saying were clouded by the hatred of himself he felt in that moment. “You know, you have flaws too. You don’t tell people how you really feel about things o-or people, you just say you’re fine and pretend like you’re not unhappy. You’re not fine, April, you’re not fine at all and I am tired of being the only one who sees that. You come over here, you basically tell me I’m the only person you’re really honest with. If that’s true, maybe you should be honest with more of the people around you. Like your fucking fiancé.” As soon as the words leave his mouth he wishes he could take them back. Because once they did, her face fell and he felt her shift backwards, away from him. 

She still has that hurt look on her face but she composes her voice enough to speak. “You want to know why I can’t be honest with him, why I can’t be honest with everyone else? Why I have to answer the question ‘how are you’ with nothing but a lousy ‘fine’ to offer people, the people who care about me? It’s because I’m scared. I’m fucking terrified. I’m terrified that if I told Lucas how unhappy I am or how really not fine I am, if I told him the whole and complete truth, that he would leave me. And then I would be all alone, again. Everyone in my life leaves. My dad left my mother, left my family. My brother left this fucking earth. My first serious boyfriend left me for another woman. _You_ left. And I’m scared that everything I do or don’t do will make the few people I have left leave. So yeah, Noah, I really should just be honest with the people around me. ‘Cause I’m just a liar, right?” 

“April, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it-” He starts, willing to do or say just about anything to wipe that look of sadness and hurt off her face, but she stops him. 

“No you don’t have to do that, you don’t have to dig up a grave that’s already been buried. I think this friendship thing was a bad idea. It never was going to work out an-anyway, not with you being you and me… being me. Maybe we should just go back to how it was before, you just ignore me and I just ignore you. It’s worked well before, why not try it again, right?” 

He can’t bear to look at her and hide the pain he feels when she says that, so he chooses to look down at the ground. “If that’s what you want…”

“Well, it is so…” She trails off and Noah waits for the goodbye that would apparently be their last this time. He didn’t want it to be but what could he do? Make her stay when he has royally fucked everything up for a second time? All he can do is stand here and try not to fall apart as she says goodbye and walks away from him, out of his life forever once again. 

“Goodbye, I guess…” Her voice shakes slightly, and she quickly walks away, not taking a second glance back at him as she does. 

He wants to run, he wants to run to get to her before she gets into her car and apologize to her a million times. He wants to tell her that he doesn’t want to do this, he doesn’t want to let her go. He wants a lot of things. A lot of things that he can’t have. 

All because he’s fucked it up. Twice. 

He turns around and slams his door, feeling more empty than he has in months.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the end! Writing Noah and April fighting is literally one of my favorite things to do. And yes, that is a Chris from Parks and Rec *literally*. Hope you're looking forward to a bunch of pain and sadness in the chapters ahead lol.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I'm not too late this week and I'm super excited for you guys to read this one! I'll leave it short and let you get down to it!  
> Beta reader - margotmuses

“Are you sure about this?” Chelsea asks, standing behind April with a scissor in her hands. 

It’d been 2 days since she went over to Noah’s apartment. 2 days since she saw Blake there. 2 days since they stopped being friends. 2 days and nearly 58 hours, she knew because it was the only thing that had been running through her mind. 

“Yes, I’m sure.” She replies, looking her in the eye through the mirror. 

“Like really _really_ sure? I mean, hun, it’s 3 inches.” 

“Really _really_ sure, Chels. Just start cutting already.”

“And this isn’t just because you got into a ‘thing’ with Noah? Which was very vague, but I know you like to cut your hair after breakups, is this one of those things?” 

“It wasn’t a ‘thing’, it was a fight and…” She looks at Chelsea, who has her curious face on, and wonders if she should tell her about it. Maybe letting it out would be good. 

But then she remembers that she would have to tell her about Blake being there and Chelsea would assume that April was jealous or something like that. Which was something she _obviously_ wasn’t. And knowing Chelsea, she would probably get her to forgive Noah, her being the more forgiving, sometimes even to a point where it made her a pushover, of the two. And forgiving him… wasn’t a thing she was prepared to do. 

“... I don’t want to talk about it any more than that. And it’s not the breakup thing, I just want to cut my hair. That isn’t an illegal thing to do, is it? Plus it’ll be grown out by the wedding anyway, so why does it matter?” 

“It matters! You called me over here on a Tuesday to cut your hair just because you, and I quote, ‘needed a change’. I don’t know about you, but it seems an awful lot like you’re doing this because you had a fight with Noah and you need to get control over something in your life but that’s not a good way of dealing with it! We need to talk about it-” 

“Chelsea! I don’t want to talk about it! Can you just cut my hair please?” 

“I’m your bra, you should be able to talk to me about your problems. I should be able to help. That's what bras are supposed to do, but you won’t let me in. I’m really starting to get sick of it. It’s like I’ve turned into a strapless bra, sure it’s good for a night on the town, but it doesn’t give you crap in the support department. I can’t give you support because you won’t tell me what the problem is!” 

“Enough! What part of ‘I don’t want to talk about it’ don’t you understand? You know what, I’m just gonna make an appointment at a salon, that’s easier than this is.” She says, storming out of the bathroom, grabbing her phone from her pocket as she does. 

“No, you’re not!” She says, snatching up the phone before April gets to the couch, making April scoff. “I can deal with adult problems, I’m really not all that dumb, April. I can tell when something’s bothering you and all signs point to Noah.” 

“All signs point to Noah? What the hell does that mean? And once again, I do not want to talk about him!” 

“What can I say, you guys sure have a pattern. You get mad at him, you two have a fight and then suddenly you’re carrying all this anger around with you! You did in the villa, you wouldn’t talk to him at all after that night.” 

“I talked to him! You know, 'pass the salt', 'excuse me' every once in a while and 'no' when he wanted to talk about us.” 

“Exactly! And I’m guessing you guys aren’t talking again, that’s probably the reason why you’re so angry right now, isn’t it?” 

“Chelsea, stop it-” April says, moving into the bathroom again, desperate to run away from this conversation.

“Communication is key to a good relationship, you know.” She states all matter-of-factly. 

“I know that. What are you, my therapist?”

“I’m just trying to help.” 

“Well, I don’t need any help. And I’m done with this conversation.” She says, closing the door of the bathroom behind her. 

“Communication is important to every relationship, even a friendship. Or you know, one that looks like more than that but both of the people just go on, blathering around, ignoring the fact that they are idiots to not be together!” Chelsea practically yells through the door. The words make April freeze for a moment, but she quickly gathers herself, grabbing a brush and running it through her hair. “You guys are idiots, you know that? I’m planning a wedding that you don’t want to be in. Because you really want to be with him but you don’t have the courage to go after what you want or the courage to even admit it to yourself- you just keep lying and burying it down and-” 

“Stop it; for once, just shut up! Please!” She says, opening the door to speak to her face to face. 

“Why? Because you’re ‘done’ with this conversation? Or because what I’m saying is true and you don’t want to admit it?!”

“No, because I’m tired of constantly fighting with everyone! Lucas picks a fight with me if a guy so much as takes a second look at me, Noah… Noah takes Blake home and basically calls me a liar and you are so happy all the time! I mean, you’ve always been that way, but now that you’re with Henrik, it’s like times a thousand. You are so happy and I’m glad that you are, but I can’t talk to you about this because you are a happy person. I am not. For me, happy seems like forever ago, happy seems like it only lasts a couple of seconds before it goes away again for days, or sometimes even weeks. I’m not even close to being a happy person, Chels.” 

“So what? Because I’m happy you can’t talk to me about your problems? I have problems all of the time! My sink broke last week. Henrik introduced me to his parents the other day and I was so nervous that I accidentally spilled a glass of Bubbly all over their beautiful tablecloth. Granted, they did love me besides that, but still-”

“Those aren’t real problems! My problems aren’t that simple, you can’t solve them by putting down some stain remover or calling a plumber, in fact I don’t know if my problems even have a solution, that’s how fucking far I am from the light in the tunnel.” 

“Well, if you would just tell me about them then maybe I could help you come up with one.” April scoffs quietly and shakes her head hesitantly. “Babe, I care about you. You’re my bra and I’m yours. All I want to do is help you and I can’t do that if you won’t tell me about it.” Chelsea says, her voice as sincere as it's ever been.

Her pleading, puppy dog eyes make her reconsider telling her everything. Everything that’s been going on with Lucas, whatever’s been going on with Noah and just really sort out her feelings. She’s already told her somewhat of the stuff with Lucas, breaking down in front of her in the bridal shop made her spill her guts about some of the problems that have been occurring. Why not just tell her all of it? The whole and complete truth. 

_Nope. Still too scared._ “I’d rather just cut my hair. Will you just help me do that or do I have to go to a salon?” She says, holding up the scissors from before. 

“That’s not going to do anything, hun, that’s like covering up a gunshot wound with a band-aid.” 

“Well, a band-aid is all I have right now.” She sighs as she sets the scissors down on the bathroom counter. She turns back to Chelsea, “So, are you gonna help me or not?” 

“Cutting your hair is not gonna help you. Sure, you’ll feel momentarily uplifted because you have one thing that you feel like you can control. You can’t control Lucas and his jealous tendencies, you can’t control Noah and whatever he’s doing to make you so upset and you can’t control me telling you the truth and expecting the same out of you. And you think that cutting your hair will make you feel better. But that feeling goes away, you know. Talking about it, really talking about it, is the only way to actually solve the problem. And I’m not gonna help you stall doing that.” She moves to grab her purse from the nearby coat rack. 

“So what, you’re just going to leave?” April asks, her voice nearly breaking at the end of the sentence. She doesn’t want to lose another person, especially Chelsea. She was her rock, her best friend. Her person.

“If you are willing to talk about it, then I won’t. But you get pretty stubborn once you’ve made up your mind, so I don’t expect you to.” She grabs her coat from the rack and puts it on. “You’re my best friend and I don’t want to leave you, but I’m your best friend too. Which means I look out for you and have to push you sometimes. So… when you’re ready to talk… call me. But only then.” 

“What about the wedding planning? Don’t we have to talk about that?” She says, her voice sounds like someone else’s in her ears, coming out as frail and cracky, desperate not to lose her best friend. 

“I’ll send you the stuff and you can figure it out. But I’m not sure if there’ll even be a wedding anymore and I don’t want to plan something that’s not actually going to happen. But I will, if you talk to me about everything.” She takes a deep breath in, waiting for a response, but no words come out of April’s mouth. “That’s what I thought. Babe, you have to know I’m not trying to hurt you. I just want there to be two happy people here instead of one… and that’s not gonna happen unless you open up a little bit. So call me when you’re ready to do that.” She slings her purse across her shoulder and whispers a quiet ‘bye’ before walking out her door. 

April takes in a sharp, shaky breath as the sound of silence echoes throughout the room. She hated this feeling. Being alone, sitting in silence, having nothing filling the onslaught of thoughts that were circling her mind on the daily. Sitting with her thoughts was a dangerous game, always has been. So she gets up, tries to wipe the frown off her face and calls ahead to make an appointment at a nearby salon. 

She gets back home an hour and a half later, with significantly shorter hair and that feeling rushing through her veins again. She almost forgot what it was like. Feeling the calm in the chaos, the scissors chopping off some of the weight she felt over the last few days. Changing her hair always made her feel better. 

She heads into the kitchen to find Lucas there, putting a plate in the dishwasher. 

“You’re late.” are the only three syllables that come out of his mouth once he turns around to see her there. 

“I know, the hairdresser lady was particularly chatty today. Apparently the other one that works there, Kimmy, was shagging her boyfriend for months before she found them doing it on one of the bowl hair dryer things the other day.” 

“Sounds awfully like the situation I think I’m in currently.”

“Oh no. You aren’t shagging Jack too, are you?” She responds playfully. “‘Cause that would just make the whole thing so much more messy-”

“April.” He interrupts her, his voice the stern, serious tone he always kept it at, no matter how much she would try to lighten things up. 

“Alright fine. Do you really think that we’re in the same situation as them? You really think that I would cheat on you?” 

“I don’t know. Your behavior lately isn’t one that I would be wrong to question. You were flirting with Noah the other day at the bar-” 

“Oh, please. I wasn’t flirting with Noah at the bar, for fuck sakes, why does everyone think something’s going on with me and him?”

“Uh, yeah, you were. I’m not crazy, April, I _know_ at least something is going on with the two of you.” 

“No, you just can’t see past the crazy. I haven’t done anything wrong, Lucas, you’ve got to know that. Otherwise, I don’t see the point in any of this. If you don’t trust me, then what the hell are we doing here?” 

“That’s a good question. What are we doing here, April?” 

“Reversing the question on me is just deflecting it, you know. It’s the therapist thing, tricking you into solving your own problems when that’s actually what you’re paying them for.” 

“Well, now look at the one who’s deflecting.” 

“What do you want me to say, Lucas? ‘Oh, yes, you are correct. Noah and I have been going at it for months. You should just throw me out now, clothes and all.’” She says, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“No, but a little honesty would be nice.” 

“I’m being honest with you!” She yells, getting fed up with everyone thinking she’s lying all the time. 

“Oh really? Then last week, when you weren’t there in the morning, where did you go? I woke up to an empty bed and a note that said you ‘went to a friends’. Which ‘friend’ did you go see? Because I’m pretty sure Chelsea doesn’t wake up until at least 11 am on weekends and you came back at close to 10-”

“I woke up early and I went to a friends’ place! That’s all it was! I’m not keeping anything from you!” 

“Which friend did you go to see, April?” 

She opens her mouth, but the words don’t come to her for a minute. “I don’t see why that matters-” 

“Whose place did you go to? Answer the damn question.” 

He stands there, arms crossed, looking at her expectantly while she stands there, every cell in her body seeming frozen. Not telling the truth, or at least not revealing it, cost her Chelsea's friendship earlier. But if Lucas had gotten mad at her for so much as calling Noah on the phone, what would he do if she told him she went over to his flat, the morning after they had gotten into a row? 

That question came up in her mind again, though. If he couldn't trust her, then what are they doing here? And if she couldn't be honest with him right now, then what is _she_ doing here? 

“Noah’s.” She says, not finding the courage to speak louder than an almost impossibly quiet whisper. "I went over to Noah's." 

He doesn’t say anything in response, nodding and pursing his lips as he stands there with his arms still crossed. He takes a deep breath in before he starts moving towards the bedroom, April following quickly behind him. 

She watches as he grabs his suitcase from their closet and furrows her eyebrows in confusion. “What are you doing?”

He moves over to his dresser and starts shuffling through the drawers, ignoring her as he does so. 

“Luke, what are you doing? Where are you going?” 

“I’m going to stay at a friends’ for a couple days. I just need a break… from all of this. I need to think.” He zips up the suitcase and quickly moves out of the room into the entryway. 

“But we’re getting married. Marriage is supposed to mean you never run away, you deal and muddle through it all… because it’s forever. Married means you don’t get to run away from me.” She gets out as she follows him from room to room. They reach near the coat rack as she finishes speaking.

“Well, maybe we’re not getting married then.” He says, the words leaving April stunned as he wraps his jacket around his shoulders. He slams the door behind him, not bothering to say another word to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it! I'm really enjoying writing now, I've been building up to what happens in the previous one and this chapter for what feels like forever and now I'm finally writing it! I know this story is a bit of a mess, I make thousands of mistakes but I really love writing it and I hope that people enjoy reading it! Anyway, bye and there'll be more to come! Kudos and comments are always appreciated as well.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiii! Sorry I'm sort of late (again), but you know, what would you expect out of me? I never post consistently, it's my thing. Anyway, so Still In My Head has reached 1000 hits! Thank you all for reading, seriously, it means the world to me. I know that this story's a mess, but it's my mess and I love it, and I hope you guys do as well! Alright, I'll just shut up and let you read the chapter.  
> As always, my beta reader is margotmuses and she is the best!

A week. 

It seems short, the days pass by quickly, everything moving far too fast to hit the pause button. The mediocrity of work and daily life passes before one can even complain about it. That’s how a week is supposed to be like, but it didn’t feel like that this week. 

Noah felt like his life was moving in slow motion since the moment April walked away from him. The hours at the library felt like they went on for ages and during his free time they felt even longer. It was weird, this time he hadn’t been around her every single day, he wasn’t a part of her daily life and she wasn’t a part of his, but a part of him still felt like it left when she did. 

You’d think that since they’d done this before, for a whole year they didn’t talk at all whatsoever except for the common courtesy message he’d sent to her on her birthday, he’d be better with all this. Especially since he’d been avoiding her in the weeks before that morning. But this time, it was different. It was _so_ different. He’d shut out all the thoughts and feelings he had for her that year. Every so often, he’d see a picture of her or her name would come up in conversation and he’d start to wonder about her, but he always shook it off because he was in a relationship with Hope. 

But now, it’s like the floodgates have opened. Even when he was avoiding being around her, he was constantly thinking of her. It was no use. There seems to be no getting rid of the things he feels for her, it had only been a desperate attempt for him to not feel hopeless and frankly, lost. 

Now it just feels like he’s somehow gotten even more lost, like he was in a maze puzzle and he came across a dead end after choosing one way out of two options. And he couldn’t go backwards. He couldn’t see if choosing the other way would’ve gotten him out of the maze, or if the decisions he made before then would’ve gotten him out even faster, he could only try to move forward. Move on, live a life separate from all of the people from Love Island...

But the only problem he has with that would be a life without them meant a life without her.

He supposed he’d get used to it, he’d get used to her being gone… but his gut said even if he did, his life wouldn’t be as good as it was with her in it. 

Today marks a week that’s she’s been out of his life. December 6th. He really should start to move on. Get over these stupid, confusing, madding feelings he has for April, but he just can’t seem to get her out of his head. 

He sighs as he flops down on his bed, where he’d spent most of his Saturday, thinking about it all. 

His phone lights up with a caller ID beside him. Chelsea. _Why is she calling him?_

“Hello? Chelsea?” He answers the call, putting the phone to his ear. 

“Hey, Noah.” She says, her voice unusually awkward. 

“Hi, Chelsea. How are you?” 

“Oh, me? I’m good, I’m doing great, how have you been? How’s the… what is it that you do? Oh yeah, library. How’s the library?” Chelsea’s high voice comes through from the other side of the call, her words sounding like she’s got something clouding her mind. 

“You mean you forgot the one personality trait I have?”

“What’s that?” 

“Books. And to answer your question, the library’s good, got a new shipment this week. I, on the other hand,… am doing okay.” He says, trying his best to sound fine, but it doesn’t exactly work out very well.

“Yeah, right. I know you had that fight with April.” She says, her voice sounding sympathetic. “Although, she didn’t tell me much about it, since you know, she doesn’t tell me anything.” 

“Uh...huh. So, um, why did you call me?” 

“Oh yeah, I have to ask you something. I need you to check on April, I’m worried about her.” Chelsea says vaguely. 

Noah sits up in the bed, suddenly becoming more alert with the words ‘April’ and ‘worried’. 

He doesn't know Chelsea very well, but he knew that she isn't worried about anything most of the time. She always found a way to ‘sunny side up’ a situation and she was never as good as Noah at reading April’s warning signs, the tell-tale ways he knew whenever she was upset, so he knew this has to be serious. 

“Why are you worried about April? What’s going on?”

“Well, we aren’t talking right now. We had a fight too and I’m waiting for her to open up to me about things. But never mind about that. So some of her bandmates called me the other day, they said she hadn’t come in to practice the whole rest of the week after Tuesday. And April…” 

“-doesn’t take off work for a week without a valid reason.” He finishes for her. 

He remembers one time April told him she didn’t miss a day of primary school, until one day she got the flu and had to spend three days stuck in her house. Worst three days of her life - he remembers her exaggerating - because she had a choir concert and she couldn’t go. She wouldn’t take off work unless something was wrong. 

“Yep. They have a press tour next week, that’s why her bandmates called me. Plus, Bobby called me yesterday, he’s supposed to be coming down to do a cake tasting for the wedding. He said he couldn’t get ahold of both April and Lucas. And they’re both off any social media.” 

“So something’s definitely wrong.” 

“Yeah. I need you to go check on her, it’s urgent. We’re not talking at the moment so I can’t do it. I mean, even if I did, she probably wouldn’t talk to me. And you’re good at getting her to talk.” 

“But we’re not talking either. She said she didn’t want me in her life anymore, she said that we should just ignore each other, like we had before.” 

“So what? You try, try to reach out to her. If it doesn’t work, then I’ll just find someone else to do it but Noah... this is April. I know how much you care about her. I’m telling you, something is off. She’ll talk to you.” 

Noah sighs quietly, pondering over it, before he opens his mouth. “Alright, I’ll go check on her. I’ll do it today.” 

“Thank you. Call me later with an update, okay?” 

Noah quickly says he will and then hangs up the phone. 

He tries to call her, at least three times, but it goes straight to voicemail every single time. He leaves a message the third time. 

“April, look, I know you don’t want to talk to me but I need to talk to you. I need to make sure that you’re alright, okay? So I’m coming over there. If you don’t want me to, then pick up the phone in the next 0.5 seconds and tell me not to, but I just- I can’t just sit here, April. I can’t just sit and think up situations that could make you skip work, or not take calls, ‘cause it’ll kill me and I just need to hear your voice again.” He pauses for a moment, waiting for something to happen, maybe waiting for a call to come in on his phone, before he hears nothing and starts speaking again. “Okay, I’m gonna be there in a few minutes.” 

He grabs his keys from off the key rack and looks up the address on his phone as he gets into his car. He pulls up to her house in nearly 15 minutes. 

He knew that if she was there, she wouldn’t want to see him. The last time he saw her she was close to crying. He hurt her, he hurt her over and over and over just like everyone else had and it hurt in his chest to think that he caused her to feel that. He knew she wouldn’t want to see him, but he desperately needs to see her. 

So he rings the doorbell and he waits. 

He fiddles with his jacket as he stands there for a minute, until the door finally opens. He hears a sigh escape her lips as she opens the door to see him there. 

Her hair is shorter than it was, more than 2 inches he assumed, and she’s wearing her hoodie down with the white strings being the only aspect of her outfit that wasn’t made of black material. There are slight bags under her eyes and it looks like she’d been crying. 

“Noah, what are you doing here?” She asks, it sounds like she’s purposefully trying to make herself sound strong and angry with him, but it comes out quiet, a mere whisper with sadness hidden under it. 

“What’s going on? You don’t look very good.” 

She changes her posture at that, standing up straighter, most likely trying to pass herself off as fine. 

“Well, jee, thanks. Did you come over here just to insult me? Or to call me a liar, or… what is it that made you just come over here, Noah?” 

“Chelsea called me, she’s been worried about you. She said that you haven’t been going to work or answering Bobby’s calls. And Lucas wasn’t answering either so she thought something weird was happening.” Her body tenses up at Lucas’s name for some reason Noah can’t figure out. 

“I’m fine. I took some time for myself, that’s all. You don’t have to do this, there’s nothing to be worried about. I’m okay. You can tell Chelsea that she didn’t have to send a proxy to come and check on me, okay?” 

“I’m not her proxy, I’m worried about you too. And looking at you, I don’t think I’m wrong to be. What’s going on?” 

“Nothing. Go home, Noah. I’m fine.” 

“You’re not. You’re clearly not. You never are, not when you say that.” 

“Don’t you have somewhere better to be? I thought we weren’t talking, we both agreed it’s better for us not to be around each other.” 

“I didn’t agree to that. You said that, and I said if that’s what you want, I’ll do it but that doesn’t mean that I don’t still care about you or don’t need to check on you because I do. What is going on? Let me in. I know that you have your walls up and I know why you do… I hurt you and I’m sorry. If I could take the words back, I would. I would take everything back. But I can’t. And now you feel like you can’t trust me and you can’t let me in. You’re not wrong to feel that way but… you don’t look too good and you’ve been taking off work and I can’t leave you here without knowing what’s been going on with you.” 

She puts a hand over her eyes and her face scrunches up, clearly frustrated and distressed in some way. But then she stops and lets out a heavy sigh. “Do you want to come inside?” She finally asks him. 

Noah nods and follows her as she opens the door and leads him through the house. They make it halfway through the living room before Noah stops her, noticing something.

“April, where’s Lucas? Shouldn’t he be here?” 

April looks at him, her eyes sad and glassy like she's Bambi when he finds out his mother is dead. But she doesn’t say anything, and starts walking again before Noah grabs her hand, pulling her back to him. 

“What happened? Where is he?”

She sighs again and takes a deep breath in before she opens her mouth. “He… left. He said he needed a break from it all. Time to think.” 

“What do you mean he left? Where did he go?” Noah says quickly, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion, trying to figure it out. 

“He said a friends’ house, but-” 

“Why did he leave? He’s your fiancé, what does he have to think about?” Noah says, suddenly feeling anger growing inside him. He isn't the type to be angered easily, always finding a way to stay cool and calm in a situation, the patient one, but he started to feel like a whole different guy the moment April said he left. 

April opens her mouth to answer the question but nothing leaves it and she bites down on her lip as she looks down at the floor. 

“April, what happened? Why did Lucas leave? Where the hell does he get off-” 

“Noah, calm down-”

“No! He doesn’t get to do this, he doesn’t get to leave you, April. He’s the person you’re getting married to, he doesn't get to just leave out of nowhere. You know what, give me his number, I’m gonna-” 

“Noah, he left because of you! He left because I told him that I went over to your flat after that night at the bar, where he thinks I was flirting with you. He was mad the night of the engagement party because I called you and I didn’t tell him that. You calling him and telling him off wouldn’t make it any better because he thinks that I am cheating on him with you and he left! He left, Noah, and he said that we might not even get married... So how's that for an excuse? We’re not getting married, so he gets to leave, okay? He gets to have an out, he gets to think things over and I can’t… I c-can’t… I can’t do anything about it.” Her voice starts to break and she puts her face in her hands as she starts to cry. He almost feels his heart break as he watches her fall apart right in front of him and the fact that this is all because of _him_ , made him feel even more awful, if that was even possible. He doesn’t think before pulling her into his chest, holding her as tight as he can, trying to comfort her by rubbing soft circles on her back and stroking her hair back, out of her face.

“I’m so stupid.” She manages to get out as she sobs into his chest. “Why did I believe he would be the one to stay? No one ever stays. Even… e-even Chelsea left.” 

“You’re not stupid. And Chelsea didn’t leave, she’s gonna come back. She’s your best friend, what was it you guys called it? She’s your…” 

“My bra. She’s my bra.” She laughs a little at the phrase, sniffling slightly afterwards. 

“Yeah, that’s right. I always thought it was weird that you guys called each other that, but… she’s your bra and she’ll always be there for you. And… I’m here. I’ll be here as long as you want me to. As long as you’ll let me. Okay?” 

“Okay.” 

Her tears start to subside after that but he still holds her once they do and she doesn’t pull away from him until a minute later. 

“Let’s go sit down, alright?” He moves her over to the couch a few spaces away from them. Noah doesn’t know what to do for a second. He always knew how to cheer her up somehow when she was down, but what kind of thing cheers up a person when their fiancé just left them?

He remembers the first thing she told him when they met. Television and Chinese food. Tried and true ways of making April happy. It's getting late, he could see the sun going down through one of the windows, but there's no way he's going to leave. Not when she's like this. 

It’s almost like she went numb. She doesn't sound or look like herself, she just feels like the shell of a person. He notices the bookshelves next to the TV, filled with nearly over 100 CDs, records and cassette tapes and smiles. It's like everything around him screamed April, except for April herself. She just sits there, watching the floor intently, like it's suddenly going to slip away from her if she looks away for a second. 

The food arrives, and April hasn’t said anything other than ‘okay’ to him for over an hour. He doesn't know what he's supposed to do or say, he’d never known a moment in the entire year and a half or so that he'd known April where she didn’t have something to say. Even when she was mad at him, she’d always tell him off, tell him what he was doing wrong and call him out on it. It was one of his favorite things about her - that she was never afraid to be honest, at least when it came to him. When it came to her and her feelings, that’s where it got a little more complicated. 

But now she's just quiet. And the quiet is suddenly driving him crazy. 

“Food’s good.” He mumbles, sitting beside her on the couch, to only hear an ‘mhm-mhm’ in response. 

“Why are you eating with chopsticks?” She asks him, over the extremely fast talking _Gilmore Girls_ playing on the television.

“Only intelligent people eat with chopsticks. And I’m intelligent, aren’t I?” 

“Are you implying that I’m not intelligent because I’m not eating with chopsticks?” 

“I don’t know. Maybe.” He challenges, smirking. 

She grabs the pair of them sitting on the coffee table and she puts her hair up into a short high ponytail, sticking them in her hair.

Noah laughs. “That’s ridiculous." 

“But I’m eating with chopsticks, aren’t I? Come on, I just put chopsticks in my hair, I’m like Ariel or something.” She says, her reference to Ariel putting the fork in her hair making Noah smile. 

“Well, Ariel wasn’t very intelligent.” 

“Excuse me! She was crafty and she had a thousand trinkets of plenty. How do you think she found those? And she could sing. That’s why she was my favorite, all the other ones just sang because it was a Disney movie.” 

“Belle was the best out of all of them. _Beauty and The Beast_ practically gave me my life’s work. I remember wishing my books would come to life like all the objects did and just tell me the ending of the story.” 

“Aw, you little bookworm. I remember when I was little I had nightmares about having to sign my voice away because of _The Little Mermaid_ , that movie was goddamn scary for me. But, my argument still stands. Ariel was intelligent, and so am I. You can tell by the chopsticks, you know?” 

Noah just smiles at her, grateful and happy that she was beginning to seem more like herself by the minute. 

“What? Why are you smiling like that?” She asks him.

“I’m just happy you’re okay.” 

The smile on her face starts to disappear after he says that and the little glimpse of her he'd seen before fades away as she puts her food down and slumps back on the couch. 

“I’m not supposed to be okay.” She mumbles as she brings her knees up to her chest. 

“Why aren’t you supposed to be okay?” 

“I… don’t know. I just feel like I’m not supposed to feel anything until he comes back. But what if he never comes back? What if I’m never able to feel anything ever again?” She sighs before looking up at him, expectantly. 

“You’ll feel something again. You’re… you’re April. You feel everything times a thousand. You’ll feel everything again, I promise.” 

“How do you know that?” 

“I just know. I don’t know a lot, but I do know a lot about you. I know you have about 6 million CDs over there, I know that you make a ton of television and song references that I usually do not get and… I know that you have this light in your eyes when you talk about music, or your friends, or anything really… I know that you feel a lot, even if you don’t actually talk about your feelings. And I know that you’ll feel something again. I know that you’ll have that light in your eyes again someday because… it’s part of you. Even if he doesn’t come back, which I’m not saying he won’t, you’ll still be you and you’re allowed to feel however you want to feel.” 

She nods and there’s a hint of a smile appearing on her face as she moves so her legs are hitting the ground. “Thank you.” 

“You don’t have to thank me. Someone has to look after you.” 

“Well, then take that ‘thank you’ as a thank you for putting away the food, which is a job I don’t want to do and it’d be really nice if you could…” She trails off and laughs as he starts to pick up the food and brings it into the kitchen. 

The day starts to fade out, the window that used to hold a sunset now holding over hundreds of thousands of stars, and Noah wonders if he should stay. 

He comes back to the couch, deciding to ask her what she wanted him to do, to find her with two blankets on top of her as the TV reflects a white shadow on her. 

“Are you planning on going to bed anytime soon or are you just going to watch _The Office_ all night?” 

“Most likely the latter. And it wouldn’t matter, I sleep here.” He gives her a questioning look. “The bed is too big, I didn’t like it very much anyways. Memory foam is not my style. Are you staying or going?” 

“I don’t know, it’s up to you.” 

“No, it’s really not. It’s your life, you wanna go live it? Or do you want to stay here?” 

“I want to stay here.” He says, smiling. His mediocre life would be waiting for him tomorrow. Maybe it wouldn’t be so mediocre anymore, now that she was back in it. 

He settles down on the couch, stealing one of the blankets she had. He lets himself relax for a while, knowing that she’s okay, at least for now, being the main reason why he could. 

The minutes pass quickly, but he doesn’t realize it until he checks his phone 2 hours later and finds it’s nearly 23:00. “It’s getting late. You tired?” He asks as he watches her yawn. 

“Yeah.” She says as she struggles to get comfortable with her position on the couch, not ever fully settling into one. 

“Come here.” He says, gesturing towards him. She moves to rest on his shoulder and he finds it funny how perfectly she fit there, all while he resists the urge to wrap his arm around her and pull her closer to him. It isn't right, she's still technically another guy’s girl and she still had the ring on her left hand, but he let himself be selfish this one time. If he's only going to have one more night with her, he wants for it to be like this.

He tries to use the television to will him to sleep, but that doesn’t work very well as the artificial light tricks his mind into staying awake. He watches as the middle rate paper salesman known as Jim confesses his love to Pam, the receptionist that sat four feet away from him who’s engaged to another worker in the office. He looks down at April as it all plays out, but she’s already out cold. 

The last thought in his brain before it finally shuts off and lets him sleep is wondering if he feels that way about April… 

He thinks he does. He might. 

He thinks he might've been falling in love with her this entire time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And end scene! I know, I'm sorry to just kind of drop this bomb on you and then head out but this chapter is already long enough as is and I like leaving it there, honestly. Adds suspense. And yes, I did have to make about a thousand Disney references as well as an Office one, sorry, but it's kind of my brand. This story like a Walmart Gilmore Girls with all the stupid references I make lol. 
> 
> Again, thank you for reading, the comments I get from you guys literally make my day every time I get one in my inbox.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're back! So sorry I haven't posted in forever, like almost a whole damn month, but you know, life happened. Good news is I have two chapters all done and decorated (maybe not decorated, since they're kind of crappy, but I needed another word) and one on the way. That sounds kind of weird, but really all it is is me saying now that I'm out of my writers block, I'm having all of this inspiration and you're getting more chapters coming soon! (probably?, I never know).  
> Beta reader: margotmuses

April wakes up the next day at 5:00 am on the dot, her head now resting near the middle of Noah’s chest. He must’ve moved in his sleep. His snoring is insufferable and non-stop, but that isn’t what she’s thinking about as she moves into the kitchen to get some coffee. 

It’s the same feeling she had when they were at the cabin- that guilt- returning. Lucas would be angry at her if he’d witnessed how Noah took care of her yesterday. How they fell asleep next to each other, so close that they could hear each other's breathing. How she fell apart and he let her cry in his arms. How when they talked about stupid stuff like Disney movies and the chopsticks they were using, she finally felt like she could be herself again. And how she did all that with the guy Lucas thinks she's having an affair with. He’d be livid if he knew, and that’s the part she feels guilty about. She doesn’t feel guilty that it happened, but that if it hadn’t happened behind closed doors, everyone would be judging her and looking at her differently. 

She grabs her phone from her pocket, picking up the headphones she’d left on the kitchen counter, turning on her favorite playlist as she moves over to the pantry, getting out the coffee beans. The music plays over her thinking as she goes through her morning activities: the things she does to fill the void of time between when she wakes up and when the rest of the world wakes up. She has never been able to fall back asleep once she has woken up, so it’s what she always resorts to. 

She hums to the music as she moves along, bopping from thing to thing, not being able to sit still for a moment. Until, she turns around from the sink to find Noah standing there.

She quickly tugs off her earbuds, putting her phone on the counter. “Hi. Do you want coffee? I made way too much - I’ve had two cups already. Or there’s tea in the pantry, if you prefer that. I don’t, coffee is my way of life, but you know, to each his own.” She says, almost running out of the breath by the end of the sentence. 

“How long have you been up?” He asks her in response. 

“That depends, what time is it?” 

“Quarter to 8.” 

“Then nearly 3 hours.” 

His eyes widen slightly, and he scoffs. “April, come on, why do you do this to yourself?” 

“I can’t help it, it’s human nature. ‘If they say why, why, tell ‘em that it’s human nature.’” 

“What’s that one?” 

“Can’t you guess?” 

“Not all of us are as awake and alert as you are at 8 in the morning.”

“‘Human Nature’, MJ. Easy one, you’d have gotten a point if you only would’ve guessed.” 

“Oh, well, poor me. What have you been doing all this time that I’ve been asleep?” 

“Well… first, I made a pot of coffee, as I cannot live without it. And then when I was done drinking all the coffee, I had all this energy that just wasn’t going anywhere, so I went for a run. Then I came back and I had another cup of coffee. I started to make breakfast after that, but I checked my phone and I realised that Bobby’s supposed to be coming down here today to do this cake tasting for the wedding that I don’t know if is still happening. So I stopped making the breakfast and that’s when you came in.” 

“So you’ve basically done more than any other human being has done today before 8 o’clock in the morning.” 

“In other words, I’m crazy.” 

“Little bit.” He says, pinching his fingers together, the movement putting a smile on her face. 

They stand there for a moment, unsure of which movement to make next. 

“So…”  
“So…” 

Noah gestures for her to go first, but she puts her hand up. “You go.” 

“What are you gonna do about the Bobby thing?”

“I’m going to go. I mean, he has other clients he’s coming down here to meet, but he still came here because of me so… I’m gonna go. I’ll just say Lucas is at a business meeting or taking care of a patient or doing… whatever it is he does, I don’t really fully understand it, but I’m sure I’ll come up with something.” 

“I should probably leave then. Unless you want company or something. Cake tasting and all that.”

She snorts out a laugh at that picture. “You really want to whore yourself out on cake with me?” 

“Okay, first, whore myself out on cake? Is that really the choice of words you want to use? And second, yeah it does seem like more of a Chelsea job, but I would love to see Bobby and I’m still here for you if you need me.”

“It would be nice to have someone else there, but I don’t want to hold you up if you have things to do. I can take care of myself. I’ve been doing it for years now, Noah. I know I worried you a little bit yesterday, but I swear I’m doing better. I can put on a fake smile and eat way too much cake all on my own.”

“‘A little bit’ is an understatement.” He responds, his eyebrows furrowed in concern. “Are you really so sure about that? You woke up at 5 am today, that doesn’t seem much better to me.” 

“I’ve been waking up at 5 and earlier since the day he left. I haven’t gotten a full 9 hours of sleep in nearly 2 weeks, I slept better than I have in a while last night.” 

“I’m still worried about you.” She meets his eyes and there’s that look again. The one she only sees when the two of them are alone, swimming in concern. She knew he’d always cared about her, but she never really realised how much until he looked at her like that. 

“I know that. You always are. But you don’t have to be, I’m fine. I know that isn’t usually the most truthful statement coming from me, but I’m okay, I promise. And you can come to the cake tasting if you want, it’d be more fun with you there.” 

“I’m pretty sure no one’s ever said that about me.” 

“What, that you’re fun to be around?” 

“Nope. ‘Fun’ isn’t really a word people commonly use to describe me, I’m more the stoic, serious guy stuck sitting in the corner with my head in a book.” 

“You aren’t always the serious guy, people are more complicated than just the one or two words that are used to describe them. Those are only the labels people put on you. Come on, this is, like, day 1 ‘don’t judge a book by it’s cover’ stuff, you should know this by now.” 

“I don’t know, all I’ve ever been labeled by is ‘librarian’ or ‘bookworm’ or ‘that one quiet guy from that one reality show’. I’m starting to think the labels really just tell the whole story.” 

“Do you see the ring on my hand?” she asks. He nods slowly, clearly unsure of where this is going. “Well, usually, when people see that, they get all excited and they ask me when I’m getting married. They label me as an engaged woman because that’s what this is supposed to mean. But if you’re actually close to the situation, or the person in your case, it’s a lot more complex than just the one thing. I’m supposed to be happy, in love, getting married… but I have no idea where my fiance actually is and the situation just gets messier for me every day that he’s gone and doesn’t come back. When people look at this, they don’t see any of that. When people look at you, they don’t usually see the fun part of you. But I do.” 

He smiles at her, and there’s a touch of sadness, like he wants to say something important, but he holds back from actually saying it out loud. She wonders what it is that he’s not telling her, what’s making him bite his tongue, when he starts to speak again. 

“What time’s the Bobby thing?” He asks her, the question making her do a double take for a second. She isn’t really sure what she was expecting, but it wasn’t that. 

“Noon, I think.” 

“I’ll meet you there if you send me the address. I have to go home, change out of these clothes.” He gestures to his outfit, the same one from yesterday, as his eyes move almost frantically towards the door. 

She nods and leads him towards the entryway. 

She notices something off with him as they reach the door. He doesn’t meet her eye as she says goodbye and he leaves without another word. She has a feeling it’s to do with whatever he didn’t say in the moment before, but she has no clue what he was thinking so she can’t figure out why he’s suddenly acting strange again. Flighty, frantic, eager to get away from her… like he was before the whole Blake situation, when he was avoiding her. 

She tries to make sense of it as she goes through her routine, changing into something other than a hoodie for the first time in days. 

She thought that they were sort of back to normal now. She thought that maybe yesterday had somehow fixed everything that is wrong with them. But maybe nothing’s changed. Whatever it is that caused him to avoid her, maybe it’s not gone. And she has absolutely no idea where she stands with him. Or anyone, really. Every relationship in her life she seems to have ruined, and she has no idea how to fix any of it. How to reach out to Chelsea, how to get Lucas to come back… how to figure out what’s wrong with Noah. 

She turns on some music in order to temporarily shut her mind off. Her mind is even more a treacherous place to wander off to than it was last week and the music helps her feel more… herself. More sane. 

She loses herself in the music again, so much so that by the time she finally stops she realises that it’s close to 12 o’clock. 

She quickly sends Noah the address to where Bobby is setting up. It is a hotel catering room, but the last time they talked he mentioned looking for a location in London to expand his bakery. 7 months after the show, he’d saved enough money to start his own bakery in Glasgow and now it’s become so popular that he’s thinking of moving it to other areas. 

She arrives in the hotel lobby about 20 minutes later. The floor is busy with people heading out the rotating doors of the place as she searches the area, looking for Noah. 

“Hey.” She turns to find Noah standing there next to her. “You ready?” 

“For what? It’s just Bobby.” 

“Yeah, it is, but this is what I’m assuming to be your first social interaction in almost a week so…” 

“Oh, please. This isn’t my first rodeo, I went to the store the other day, sad Debra from behind the register can vouch for me. Her boyfriend just broke up with her and we both agreed that men suck and that ice cream is a better thing to fall back on.”

“That was a stranger, this is someone you know. Someone who knows you. It’s different.” 

“I know you, don’t I? Doesn’t that count for something?” 

“That’s different too.” 

“Well, whatever. It’s fine, I’m ready. You do not need to treat me as if I’m fragile, Noah. I am not fragile. I know I broke, but I’m fixing myself up. My heart isn’t made of glass, it’s not gonna break if you look away for one second.”

“I know that, I’m just trying to make sure that you’re okay-” 

“I am.” She meets his eye, trying to clarify this. “I’m perfectly fine. Let’s just go see Bobby, alright?

He nods and they head into the mostly cleared out dining room, finding Bobby sitting there, on his phone. He looks up to find them and grins, although his eyes tell her he’s clearly a bit surprised by Noah’s appearance there. 

“Hey, strangers. What are you two doing here?”

“We’re here to see a certain baker, I think his name was Bob? Could be Brian. Noah, do you remember?” She banters with him, a twinkle in her eye. 

“Hm, no… I think maybe it was Robert. I don’t know, she talks so much, sometimes it just…” He hand-gestures it going over his head. 

“Hey! That’s rude.” She elbows him in the side while he just stands there grinning. She returns her attention to Bobby, giving him a proper hello and hugging him. 

“Hey, mate. Didn’t know you were coming.” He says as he turns to Noah, giving him a friendly pat on the shoulder. 

He looks back to April questioningly. “Where’s Lucas? Wasn’t he coming?”

“He… got busy. And he doesn’t do much of the wedding planning anyway, In fact, Chelsea would’ve probably come with me if she weren’t… busy as well.” She struggles with lying about where they are, slipping up but covering it with a quick vague explanation as to why Chelsea isn’t here. 

“Well, I can assume Chelsea is out stockpiling presents if she’s not here for the opportunity to eat free cake.”

She laughs awkwardly, not even sure if that was a joke, but desperately trying to crawl out of this hole she’s created for herself. 

“Alright, we should probably go sit down, shall we?” Noah says, sensing the awkward tone in the room, trying to drive the conversation elsewhere. 

Bobby gestures behind them and they follow him to a table nearby where they were standing. 

“So… April, how did you get this sucker to come with you to this thing? I didn’t think wedding cake tasting was high up on your bucket list, Noah.”

“Through my magical powers of persuasion.” She gives the two of them a bright smile. “No, um, he offered to come with me. Plus, you know, his life is kind of barren and empty right now so-”

“Hey, my life isn’t barren or empty. Now that is rude.” 

They slowly go through each one of the small sample slices, along with Noah making small judgements on every single one and April going with it, bantering with the two of them as they make it through the flavors of cake. She can’t believe how unbelievably normal and… right it all feels. At this time yesterday, she was lying down on her couch staring at the ceiling, feeling completely empty. And now… it’s like a switch flipped in her and she’s suddenly alive again.

“I think you should go with the chocolate one, that is my final recommendation.” Noah says beside her, after they’d tried nearly all of them. 

“Noah, there are like three chocolate ones, which one are you talking about?” 

“The one you liked.” 

“I’m pretty sure that I liked all of the chocolate ones.” 

“Well, you really liked one of them.”

“That doesn’t help me narrow down the search. You’re not a very useful cake tasting companion you know. How do you know where all the books are in that big library of yours but not remember the one singular cake I apparently really liked?” 

“The books are in alphabetic order by author, it’s easier.” 

She shakes her head at him dramatically, the big smile she’s had on her face this whole time staying on. 

“You guys are adorable, like one of those super old couples who bicker all the time.” Bobby comments as he watches the two of them banter back and forth. 

April chuckles as she tucks a piece of hair behind her ear. He’s right, she thinks, they are somehow absurdly comfortable with each other now. They do seem like a couple who’d been together for forever, who’d known the ins and outs of each other's personalities for years, but the thing is… they aren’t a couple. They barely ever were. 

Every time she was around him previously, she always had the thought in the back of her mind, a constant repetition of the fact that she’s engaged and she shouldn’t be feeling anything at all towards him. But somewhere along the line… she started to ignore that voice in her head. She decided to allow herself to feel real feelings for him. The excitement, the happiness, the funny feeling of butterflies that came up every time he came around. 

_“... and you’re allowed to feel however you want to feel.”_ The words Noah said to her just yesterday come back to her in that moment. 

Except she isn’t. She isn’t allowed to feel any of those things, not with him. She’s not supposed to. 

“April?” Noah’s quiet, concern-filled voice she’s noticed was only reserved for her, sounds far off even though he’s right beside her. He turns to her, his hand resting on her knee. “April, are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I just have to use the bathroom.” Bobby points to his right and she nods, quickly getting up from her chair and her flats move fast on the hardwood floors to over to where the door of the bathroom. 

She goes inside and checks underneath each one of the stalls, making sure no one is there to hear her. She heads into the first one, pulling her phone out from her pocket as she sits down on the closed toilet. 

She takes a deep breath before clicking on the number that comes first in her most recent calls. She taps her fingernails on her knee as she listens to the phone ring, waiting for something to come out the other end. But silence comes at the end of the three rings, that goes along with a sudden dial tone. 

“Hi… it’s me.” She struggles to come up with the words to say, having not thought this all through. “I haven’t called, or tried to call. I figured you wouldn’t pick up anyway. And I thought that maybe if I pushed too hard, you wouldn’t come back so… I gave you your space. I’ve been kind of a mess this past week, but I’m not calling you to tell you about that. Today… was fine. I was normal, I was good, I was… myself. Even though you were- are, gone, I still got to be me. I want you to know that I can live without you, I can do just fine, Lucas. But, you know, if you still want to be us, I’m ready to talk. I’m ready to go back to the way things were, I’m so-” She’s overcome with all the emotions of today, she cuts herself off, almost choking on her own words. “Just please come home, if you want to make things work. That’s where I’ll be.” She lowers her phone from her ear as she ends the call.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all for this chapter! 
> 
> Random notes:  
> I've been on an April sleeping schedule, waking up at 5 in the morning (because reasons) and trust me when I say that it is EXHAUSTING. I do not recommend it.  
> I'm not sure if anyone's going to read this because I'm just kind of spewing random crap but I have a playlist! It isn't perfect, not all the songs apply to SIMH a lot, but it's basically all the songs I listen to while I write and kind of my life's work so check it out if you want :)  
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3S5suOMcMBLICdUcdBbFDS?si=cca129e2001e4fbd


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the second chapter that is coming out today, yes I am double posting because I took, like, 3 and 1/2 weeks off. Should be another one coming in about 1/3 of that time. Alright I'll be done talking and you can read my crappy work!
> 
> Beta reader: margotmuses, thank you once again for putting up with my stupidity.

Noah sighs as he watches April practically run away from the table, suddenly eager to get away from him after Bobby mentioned they’d seemed like a couple. 

The first thought that permits his brain is that he shouldn’t have come here today. He should’ve just left the moment he woke up at April’s flat. April and Lucas’, he corrects himself, since Lucas is technically still living there. He should be far, far away from her, for both of their sakes. It could hurt April, if Lucas knew that he was here with her, cake tasting for their wedding… he didn’t know the guy very well, but he’s sure that his reaction to that wouldn’t be positive. And being around April after what he concluded last night… he shouldn’t be here, he shouldn’t. 

He had been trying to keep the thought out of his mind, but it kept popping back up since he woke up this morning. The thought that he might be in love with the girl who still has a ring on her finger. Everything would be so much easier if it weren’t for that stupid ring. 

He thought that he was, that he could be. But he’s not supposed to do that, he’s not supposed to be able to be in love with her… he can’t. That word has been permanently sketched in the back of his mind since the day of the engagement party. 

God, he almost told her today. Almost blurted it out, like an idiot. He isn’t even sure he actually is, but whenever he’s around her, his mind just goes straight to shit. He turns into a melt, a puddle of worry, adoration and… maybe love, whenever she shows up. 

Although he was worried, she’d been fine all day. She was perfect, witty, exactly like her normal self. It was almost as if nothing had happened, she hadn’t taken 4 days off of work, she hadn’t fallen apart yesterday… it was like Lucas hadn’t left at all. In truth, it had been a little weird for her to seem magically put together within one night, but he was just happy to have her back. Happy that they were finally on the same wavelength. Happy because he thought maybe this could be normal, maybe things could be like this all the time, maybe… there was hope for him. 

But the moment that those words came out of Bobby’s mouth, he felt her slipping away from him once again. 

“So… I’m assuming Lucas isn’t actually ‘busy’, like April said he is, is he?” Bobby asks him, snapping him out of his train of thought. He air-quotes the word ‘busy’. 

“No, uh, no he’s not.” Noah admits to him, a little reluctant to do so. He isn’t sure how much April wants disclosed to the rest of them, or if she just doesn’t want anyone to know at all, or anything, really. He has been confused - about everything - since he woke up this morning. 

“Well, then where is he?” 

Noah opens his mouth to explain, but he doesn’t get the chance to as April comes back to the table, her feet pointing towards the door. “Bobby, I think we’ll go with the Red Velvet one. It’s classy enough for Lucas, but it’s universal enough for everyone that will be there to put up with it. Anyway, I have to get going, it was nice to see you. Noah, can you pass me my purse?” 

“What’s going on? Why are you leaving so soon?” Noah asks her, sitting still in his spot. 

“I just need to go, alright? Do you have a problem with that?” She stutters out, clearly not wanting to explain the reason for her sudden departure. 

“No, I don’t. Alright, well, just give me a moment and I’ll leave with you.” He grabs her purse, handing it to her as he stands up from the chair. 

“Don’t. Stay here, you guys didn’t really get the chance to catch up. You two have fun.” She smiles and then starts to walk away, but Noah follows, grabbing her hand. 

“April, hold on.” Unlike yesterday, she quickly pulls her hand away as she turns back to him, her demeanor seeming to be cold towards him once again. “What’s this really about? I know that thing Bobby said freaked you out, but he didn’t mean-” 

“This has nothing to do with that. I-i didn’t even really get what he was saying anyway. I just have to go home, I have other business to deal with that doesn’t have to do with you. Just let me go, Noah.” 

The way the phrase comes off her lips makes him think for a moment. He wonders what she means by that, if she means he has to let her go emotionally, too. He doesn’t know if he can ever do that. He’s let her go a million times before, watched her walk away from him and his life, but this time it feels different. Throughout the last 24 hours, he’d felt as close to her as he’s ever been. As he’s ever got to be. How’s he just supposed to let all that go in one single moment?

He appears to swallow and come to a decision before replying. 

“Fine. But you’ll call me, right?” 

“Are we suddenly in secondary school and have to ask that again? Yeah, I’ll call you. Now goodbye.”

He opens his mouth to say goodbye back, but she’s already gone. 

“So what’s going on there? Did you finally figure out you’re totally head over heels for her?” Is the first thing that comes out of Bobby’s mouth once April makes her last step out of the room and Noah sits back down at the table. 

Noah furrows his eyebrows, confused as to where he got that. Or how he figured it out that quickly. “I’m not… she’s engaged, I’m nothing. I can’t be anything for her.”

“You’re obviously feeling something for her. And her fiancé isn’t even here, he didn’t come to the cake tasting for his own wedding. That seems like a pretty lousy track record as a fiancé to me.” 

“It’s a lot more complicated than that.” 

“What’s complicated about it?” 

“Everything. Every single part of it is complicated and I’ve had a headache all day. All year, actually.” 

“Why don’t you catch me up then? That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?” 

“Where would I even start?” 

“The Lucas part. I’ve been dying to know why April was acting so weird whenever I brought him up. What happened to him?”

Noah then goes through the explanation of where Lucas is, or rather, where he isn’t, and what happened with April just the day before. He leaves out the tiny detail of the fight being about him because if he did, he would have to explain everything and… he isn’t ready to admit anything yet. Saying it out loud would mean that it’s real and he… isn’t ready for it to be.

“Is she okay? Why is she still planning the wedding? You’d think she’d want to think about anything other than this.” 

“Yeah, I don’t really get it either. I think she just wants everything to seem normal, but she… really wasn’t good yesterday. And she’s been holed up in that house for days.” 

“That sucks. Does seem like Lucas to do that though, he can be… dramatic.” 

“If ‘dramatic’ means leaving your fiancée because you can’t deal with an argument, then yeah, he’s dramatic. And it’s not some grand television drama, watching her go through this hasn’t exactly been the greatest for me.” 

“Of course it hasn’t, but come on. They’re broken up, you must be at least a little happy about that.” 

“They’re not broken up, he’s just taking some time. They’re only on a break.” 

“‘A break’ means broken up. I mean, have we learned nothing from Ross and Rachel?” 

“Considering how she left here, I think she’s gone back to him, Bobby.” 

“Well, if that’s true, how do you feel about that? We haven’t really gone into how you feel about April yet.” 

“I was hoping you’d forget about that part of the equation.” 

“Only never. That’s like the main part of the equation, the flour in the chocolate chip cookie.” 

“Did you have to turn it into a baking metaphor?” 

“Absolutely yes, and you, sir, are deflecting. Tell me how you feel about her.”

Noah scoffs quietly and looks towards the door. “You know I could just leave right now, I don’t have to tell you anything.” 

“I know that, but you want to. Why else would you come here today?” 

“To make sure that April’s alright.” 

“See, you can’t even go a minute without saying her name.” Bobby gushes, but Noah just shakes his head, still not ready to talk about this. “Okay, fine, maybe the big reason you came here today was to take care of her ‘cause you’re just that knight-in-sparkling-armor guy, but a part of you stayed because you wanted to unleash some of those feelings and thoughts onto someone other than yourself. All I’m saying is you could’ve left a long time ago, mate.” 

There’s a short pause, filled with uncomfortable silence, before Noah says: “It’s shining, by the way. Knight-in-shining-armour.” 

“Oh, well, you would know.” He responds, and Noah shakes his head at him. 

He sighs once again, this time because he knows that he’s right, that he needs to let some of this out. Sort out the mess that has become his mind because of this girl and his stupid, uncontrollable feelings for her. 

“I guess, if you have to know, it wouldn’t be awful to talk about.” 

“Okay, not awful. That's a pretty low bar, but I can work with that.” 

Noah sucks in a breath, unsure of how to do this. 

“Well… I have feelings for April.” 

“Obviously. Did you just realise that? I could’ve told you that, I could’ve told you that a long, long time ago. Like, uh, I don’t know, the moment you met her?” 

“No, I didn’t just realise it. I realised it a while ago, then I tried to ignore it, then there was this thing with Blake and she was mad at me and then Lucas left her and… I’m in way too deep and I just need you to tell me that this isn’t real. The feelings I have… they’re just leftover ones, right?” 

“Leftover feelings? What, did you put them in the fridge and they went bad?” Bobby jokes, not being able to help himself. 

“Yeah, leftover feelings, like when you see an ex and you’re lonely and sad and you start to think you might have feelings for them again, but you don’t, they’re just leftover feelings from the break-up. I need you to tell me that this is all this is, because if it’s more, I’m not sure I can take her getting back together with him. I think it might be more… a lot more… so I need you to tell me it’s not.” 

Bobby suddenly turns serious, a mask of his he doesn’t show a lot, as he thinks about it. “I don’t know what to tell you, mate, I don’t think they are leftover feelings… I think you’ve been feeling this for her for a very long time.” Noah sighs and drags his hand along his face, frustrated. “I mean, what exactly are these ‘feelings’? That’s very vague, you know.”

“Non-descriptive was what I was shooting for, but yes, vague also works. It’s hard to explain.”

“Be descriptive about it, then. Tell me, you know, how you feel when she walks into a room, how you feel when you talk to her. Emote, for once.” Bobby urges, but Noah just purses his lips, still uncertain if he wants to reveal any of this to anyone yet. “You know I’m not gonna be here forever, may as well get it out before the next century. My advice is stellar, but I don’t just hand it out without knowing the whole story. I’m gonna need you to not be a robot for like 20 seconds and try to be vulnerable. I ask you again: how do you feel when she walks into a room?” 

Noah’s quiet for a second, his eyes closed as he thinks back to the moment he met her. The moment he saw her for a second time, at the engagement party. The crowded room filled with strangers and the one face he knew was hers. He tries to think of what he felt in that split second that their eyes met and he somehow finally finds the words. 

“When she walks into a room, all I can see is her. I-it’s like nobody else is there, even if it’s a party or a crowded bar and over a dozen other people are around us, it’s… just her. And I’ve always hated parties and big events, they were all too social for me to get into, but with her there, I don’t mind them. My entire world just gets better whenever she comes around. It’s like I’ve been sitting in the dark my whole life and she just came in and lit it all up. She just- she makes everything better. Just by being there.” 

“And… you would do anything for her, right? I mean, if she came up to you with a dead guy she killed and asked you to help her bury him, would you?”

“April wouldn’t kill anyone. She can get mad, usually at me, but I don’t think she would ever do that.” 

“Who knows? Maybe she’s a secret serial killer and is hiding four dead guys in her closet.” 

“Okay, that’s weirdly specific and I’m kind of concerned.” 

“Been watching a lot of _Forensic Files_. Perks of being inside a couple.” 

“You are?” 

“Yeah I am. I mean, she probably has like a million ways she can kill me so maybe not for long, but yeah, I got me a lady.” 

“That’s really good, mate, I’m happy for you.” 

“Thank you. It’s real nice, I finally-” He stops mid-sentence, quickly realising something. “Hey, you’re changing the topic. We’re talking about your girl right now, we can talk about mine later. God, I have to stop letting you get me sidetracked with my points. What was I saying?” 

“You were asking if I would do anything for April.” Bobby doesn’t say anything in response, instead choosing to wave his hand as to gesture Noah’s response to the question. “I… this is dumb. Of course I would do anything for her. Even if that meant burying a guy she hypothetically killed, which she would never do so it wouldn’t matter. Even… if that meant- means watching her get back together with a guy… that I know doesn’t deserve her. If she could tell me that he would make her happy, I wouldn’t do anything to stop her from doing that. Anything.” 

They sit there silently for a moment, letting the words he just said sink in. 

“Well… Noah, I don’t think that’s nothing. I think that’s… love. I think you love her.” 

Noah can feel his stomach twist into knots as soon as he says that. This is exactly what he was afraid of. It hadn’t been some stupid thought he had when he was too exhausted to think any better, it was actually real. It couldn’t be real. 

“No, no I’m not in love with April. Th-that’s crazy, she’s engaged, I can’t be in love with her…”

“That’s your whole thing though, right? You think just because April’s engaged, you can’t have feelings for her, you can’t be in love with her, it’s your way of denying and repressing the feelings you have, but you do have them and they are real.” 

“But I can’t even be with her. How can I love her… when I’ve never been with her for more than a day?” 

“I think you’ve been in love with her since the day you met her, Noah. You didn’t ever really register it, I have no idea why, it’s very obvious. Everyone around you guys can see it, except you, apparently. Took me to realise it for you.” 

“No, I… I did realise it. Last night. I tried to brush it off.” 

“Hasn’t worked too well for you, has it?” 

“I almost told her earlier today when she was talking about her ring.”

“That seems like a weird place to almost say it, but sure.” 

“And you keep bringing it up so yes, it hasn’t been a very useful strategy.” 

“Would you like to hear the brilliant piece of advice I’ve prepared especially for you?”

“Not really, but continue.” 

“I think…” He pauses to smile wide at him. “that you should tell her.” 

“And I think that you’ve gone insane.” Noah says, his eyes going wide at the thought. “I can’t tell her, I can never tell her, she’ll never want to be with me. I’ve hurt her so much it breaks my own damn heart to think about, she- she had already gone through so much shit in her life and I made it worse for her. It would only ever hurt her more if I told her.”

“Telling her that you love her would hurt her more? I’m not sure you know what love means, Noah.” 

“She’s going back to Lucas. She loves him, not me. It would hurt both of us. Knowing that I love her and that she loves him, that hurts. I don’t want to feel this way, but I can’t stop it. If I can stop it for her, then I sure as hell will.”

“Do whatever you want, all I know is that you don’t have to feel this way anymore. Telling her would get it off of your chest, release all the weight you’ve been carrying. Even if she straight out rejects you, then at least you told her. At least she knew.” 

“But it would ruin everything. I mean… what would I even say? ‘Hey, April, I know you’re engaged to a man who thinks I’m a threat, but guess what, I might actually be one since, you know, I’m in love with you and everything. Wanna run away with me?’” 

“No, you just tell her what you told me, about how you feel about her. Tell her whatever they put in those romance novels you’re awfully fond of, I don’t know, I won’t write your confession of love for you, but just… tell her. Please. You’re my best mate from the show and April’s genuinely just one of the greatest people I’ve ever met, you guys deserve to be happy. You could get everything you’ve ever wanted if you just find a way to tell her how you feel.” 

He gives him a small sad smile. “Thanks for the advice. You’re a real good friend.” 

“I know, right? Friendship. But, you know, not like the way you do it where you’re secretly in love with the person you’re ‘just friends’ with. That’d be weird with us.” He gives him a dry chuckle. “Well, I’m sorry to leave you in a weird place but I’m afraid I must go back to my duties as Baker Bobby. I hope you figure it out, mate.” He gets up and gives him a pat on the shoulder before starting to head back to his job. 

“Hey Bobby?” Noah asks looking over his shoulder back to where Bobby was walking towards the kitchen. 

“Yeah?” The Scot responds back, stopping to turn around. 

“You shouldn’t wait around, you know, with your girl?” 

“Yeah, I know. You shouldn’t either. Go get her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all, at least for this week!
> 
> You can criticize my characterization of Bobby if you want, I know it's bad and very cheesy, I chalk it all down to me not knowing how to write him. You can also just criticize the whole story if you want, I know it's kind of a shit show, but I'm grateful that at least some people like it!! 
> 
> Kudos and comments are always appreciated! I know I only reply to some of the comments, but they really help me keep going with this story and thank all you guys who comment/follow this story, it really does means a lot to me.


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